“For the Sake of a People’s Poetry”: Walt Whitman and his Creative Reception

“More than a century after his death, American poets still talk about, talk to and back to Walt Whitman. So palpable is Whitman’s presence that it is difficult for an American poet to define himself or herself without direct reference to him,” writes Ed Folsom in the “Introduction” to the volume The Measure of His Song, a collection of global voices responding to Whitman. Indeed, Whitman envisioned poets as his audience, and asked them to continue his legacy. Following an introduction to Whitman and his age, we will engage in a dialogic reading of Whitman’s writing with a selection of creative responses it has triggered in the 20th and 21st centuries. The emphasis of this class will be on poets continuing Whitman’s democratic vision as a “people’s poet”, as well as on female and post-colonial voices responding and at times also contesting his ideas about the world.

A reader with material will be made available at the start of the semester.