Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of American poet Walt Whitman. Although Whitman is now considered one of the most influential poets in American history, his work was controversial during his lifetime, particularly his collection Leaves of Grass, which some critics described as “obscene” because of its overt sexuality.

Walter Whitman, Jr. was born in Huntington, New York in 1819. He was the second of nine children. Both of his parents were Quakers with little education. Whitman’s father was a carpenter, and he was nicknamed “Walt” to distinguish him from his father, Walter Whitman, Sr. At the age of four, he moved to Brooklyn with his family, and they struggled economically.

Whitman generally described his childhood as being “restless and unhappy,” due to his family’s financial difficulties, but he later recalled one particularly happy moment. During a celebration in 1825 at a library in Brooklyn, the Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette lifted the young Whitman into the air and kissed his cheek. Years later, Whitman worked at that same institution as a librarian.

Whitman attended public schools in Brooklyn up until the age of 11, after which he sought employment to assist his family. He worked as an attorney’s assistant, had clerical jobs with the federal government, and was a newspaper printer. In 1831, Whitman took a job as the apprentice of Alden Spooner, who was the editor of the weekly newspaper The Long Island Star. Whitman spent much time at his local library, he joined a town debating society and began attending theater performances.

It was around this time that Whitman published some of his earliest poetry in The New York Daily Mirror. In 1835, he worked as a typesetter in New York City, and the following year he moved back in with his family in Long Island, where he taught intermittently at various schools until 1838. Whitman wasn’t happy teaching, and he decided to start his newspaper, which he called the Long Islander. Whitman did everything for the paper; he was the reporter, publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor. He even provided home delivery. After ten months he sold the publication.

Whitman continued writing. During the 1840s, he contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals, such as Brother Jonathan magazine. In 1842, Whitman wrote a novel called Franklin Evans about the temperance movement. In 1852, he serialized a mystery novel titled Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, and in 1858, he published a self-help guide called Manly Health and Training under the pen name Mose Velsor.

In 1855, Whitman self-published the first edition of his landmark poetry book Leaves of Grass, which he had been working on for around five years. This was his magnum opus. The book was strongly endorsed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a five-page letter to Whitman praising the work, which was printed in the New York Tribune, and this helped to stir up considerable interest in the book. Leaves of Grass, which was widely distributed, quickly became controversial, due to claims that some of the material in the poems was sexually offensive.

On more than one occasion, Whitman was fired or denied work because people were offended by the sexual imagery in his poetry. Although Whitman is largely considered to be gay or bisexual by biographers, his actual sexual orientation remains a mystery, and is debated. Whitman’s sexual orientation has been generally assumed based on his poetry, as he never publicly addressed this.

In 1856, the second edition of Leaves of Grass was published, with 20 additional poems. Then further revised editions were published in 1860, 1867, and five more times throughout Whitman’s life. Whitman continued to edit and revise Leaves of Grass until his death. The title of the poetry collection is an example of Whitman’s self-deprecating wordplay and humor. It’s a pun and meant to have multiple meanings. Leaves referred to the “sheets of paper in a book,” and “grass” was used to denote “things that weren’t of much value.” In other words, Leaves of Grass means “pages of little value.”

Whitman is often referred to as the “father of free verse poetry.” The poems in Leaves of Grass do not rhyme or follow standard rules for meter and length. The collection of loosely connected poems represents a celebration of Whitman’s philosophy of life, as well as his praise of nature and the human body. The first edition only contained twelve poems and the final edition contained over 400. The last version of the book was published in 1892, and is referred to as the “deathbed edition.”

Whitman’s poetry is intertwined with America’s past, and many scholars consider him to be an important figure in understanding our country’s history, because of his ability to write in a singularly American character. During the American Civil War, Whitman went to Washington, D.C. where he volunteered to work in hospitals caring for the wounded, and when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated Whitman wrote a highly influential poem about him called O Captain! My Captain. According to poet Ezra Pound, Whitman is “America’s poet… He is America,” and Whitman said, “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

During his lifetime, groups of disciples and admirers of Whitman formed, who would meet to read and discuss his poetry. One group subsequently became known as the Bolton Whitman Fellowship, or Whitmanites” and its members held an annual Whitman Day celebration around the poet’s birthday on May 31^st.

Whitman died in 1892, at the age of 72. He is buried at the Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

In 1940 a U.S. postage stamp was created in Whitman’s honor. His poetry has been set to music by more than 500 composers, and his vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat culture and its writers, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s. Here in my hometown, at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, there’s a life-size replica of Gabriel Harrison’s famous drawing of Whitman standing at the front entrance of the store as its mascot.

Some of the quotes that Walt Whitman is known for include:

Keep your face always toward the sunshine— and shadows will fall behind you. 

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul… Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. 

The art of art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. 

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person. 

Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I am satisfied … I see, dance, laugh, sing… I exist as I am, that is enough.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.

In the faces of men and women, I see God.

by David Jay Brown

Carolyn and I have admired the work of Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, who won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and whose work was inspired by his mystical experiences. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, a movement that renewed interest in aspects of Celtic cultures, and he co-founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland in 1865. Yeats’ mother came from a wealthy merchant background, and his family was unusually creative. Jervis Yeats, William’s great-great-grandfather, was a well-known painter, and his father, brother, and sisters, were all painters or artists. In 1867, the family moved to London to aid their father in his career as a portrait painter.

Yeats received his initial education at home, where his mother entertained him with Irish folktales. He read poetry from an early age and was fascinated by Irish legends. In 1877, Yeats entered the Godolphin School in West London, where he studied for four years. Yeats had difficulty with language because he was tone-deaf. He was also a poor speller due to dyslexia, and so was “only fair” in his academic performance.

That same year Yeats began writing his first poetry when he was seventeen. He was influenced by the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake, and he wrote early poems about love, magicians, monks, and a woman accused of paganism.

In 1880, Yeats’ family returned to Dublin for financial reasons. Yeats resumed his education at Dublin’s Erasmus Smith High School. His father’s studio was nearby, and Yeats spent a great deal of time there, where he met many of the city’s artists and writers. In 1885, the Dublin University Review published Yeats’ first poems, as well as an essay entitled The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson. Between 1884 and 1886, Yeats attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin.

In 1889, Yeats’ first volume of verse, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, was published. It is slow-paced lyrical poetry that tells the story of a mythical hero who embarks on a journey to the Land of Youth, and is notable for its use of vivid imagery, mythological references, and a sense of nostalgia for Ireland’s past.

Yeats had mystical experiences throughout his life, and he describes having had visionary encounters with spirits or supernatural beings since childhood. Yeats said that he had visions of a figure that appeared to be a spiritual guide and that this figure communicated with him, and provided him with insights and wisdom about life and art. Yeats was deeply interested in mysticism, the occult, and the esoteric, and these interests were reflected in his poetry and writings. For example, in the following excerpt from his poem Vacillation, Yeats describes how he felt during a mystical experience:

“While on the shop and street I gazed,
My body for a moment blazed,
And twenty minutes, more or less,
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.”

In 1890, Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society in Great Britain devoted to the study and practice of ritual magic, the occult, metaphysics, and spiritual development, and his interest in mysticism was further informed by Hinduism, astrology, spiritualism, and theosophical beliefs. Yeats also believed in fairies, that they are real, living creatures.

The late 19th Century saw a literary movement called The Irish Literary Revival, which was a flowering of Irish creative talent in poetry, music, art, and literature. There were two main hubs, London and Dublin, and Yeats was considered a major figure in this movement. In 1888, he published Fairy and Folk Tales of Irish Peasantry, and in 1893, he published The Celtic Twilight, a collection of folklore and reminiscences from Ireland that were important to this moment.

Yeats also wrote plays. In 1903 he published On Baile’s Strand, about the Irish mythological hero Cuchulain, which was first performed at the grand opening of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904. The Abbey Theatre — which is one of Ireland’s leading cultural institutions — was co-founded in 1899 by Yeats, along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn. The Abbey Theatre was the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world, and the performances there played to a mainly working-class audience, rather than the usual middle-class Dublin theatergoers. Some of Yeats’ other plays included Dierdre and The King of the Great Clock Tower. In 1917, Yeats married Georgia Hyde-Less, who was 25 years younger, and they went on to have two children together. During their marriage, the couple experimented with various techniques for spirit contact, and communication with spirits, who they referred to as their “instructors.”

Yeats was politically motivated, and he was a part of the Irish Nationalist Movement that asserted that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state. In 1922, Yeats was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State, and he served two terms, until 1928. His time as a senator allowed him to contribute to the cultural and political landscape of Ireland in different ways.

In 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation,” beating out Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.

In 1925, Yeats published a book-length study of various philosophical, astrological, and poetic topics titled A Vision, which he wrote while experimenting with “automatic writing” with his wife, and serves as a “meditation on the relationships between imagination, history, and the occult.” This work was substantially revised by Yeats in 1937.

In 1934, Yeats received a controversial Steinach operation (a half of a vasectomy) which supposedly “rejuvenated” him for the last five years of his life. Yeats was reported to find “new vigor, evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women,” which he described as a “second puberty.”

Yeats died in 1939 in Menton, France at the age of 73. During his lifetime, Yeats published more than 100 works of poetry, drama, and prose, and was a towering figure in the world of English literature. In 1989, sculptor Rowan Gillespie created an eight-foot statue of Yeats, that now stands in front of the Ulster Bank Building on Stephen Street in Sligo, Ireland.

Some of the quotes that William Butler Yeats is known for include:

There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure, nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

What can be explained is not poetry.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

by David Jay Brown

Carolyn and I have both long admired the writings of the French poet, philosopher, essayist, and art critic Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire is known for his major contributions to 19th-century French literature and is renowned for his revolutionary collection of lyric poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. His father was a senior civil servant and amateur artist, and he was 34 years older than Baudelaire‘s mother. Baudelaire was 6 years old when his father died, so he never had an opportunity to know him well, and his mother remarried a man that Baudelaire never got along with well.

Baudelaire was educated during his stay at a boarding school in Lyon. In 1835, a fellow student at the school had this to say about Baudelaire, “[He was] much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils… we are bound to one another… by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature.” Baudelaire later attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he studied law, and gained his degree in 1839. At the time, the law was a popular course of study for those not yet decided on any particular career.

Baudelaire spent his days in art galleries and cafés, and he experimented with opium and hashish. In 1841 he went on a voyage to Calcutta, India, and the trip left vivid impressions on him that later influenced his poetry. Baudelaire found beauty in the darker elements of human experience and was rather eccentric in his style of dress. He often dressed in black, dyed his hair green, and rebelled against the conformist, bourgeois world of 19th-century Paris in both his personal life and his poetry.

Baudelaire’s first art review was published in 1845, and between 1844 and 1847 eleven of Baudelaire’s poems were published in the Parisian weekly review magazine L’Artiste under a pen name. These were Baudelaire’s first published poems and it is unknown why he used a pen name for both the poems and the art review.

In 1847, Baudelaire’s novella, La Fanfarlo was published. The name in the title, Fanfarlo, has been associated with a Polka-dancer of the time. This novella tells the fictionalized story of the writer’s love affair with a dancer. That same year Baudelaire became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which he felt a strong kinship with.

Baudelaire translated a number of important English works into French, such as Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and many of Poe’s works, which helped to popularize his work in France. Although Baudelaire admired Poe, and the two never met, there was a literary connection between the two writers. Baudelaire found tales and poems by Poe that he claimed, “had long existed” in his “own brain but never taken shape.” Baudelaire also wrote critical essays on contemporary art, and essays on a variety of other subjects.

In 1857 Baudelaire’s most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal was first published, although more poems were added in later editions. Upon its original publication, the poetry collection was embroiled in controversy. Within a month of its publication, the French authorities brought legal action against Baudelaire and his publisher, claiming that the work was “an insult to public decency.”

Although the French government condemned the poetry collection when it was first published, with six of its poems censored due to their “immorality,” it is now considered an important work of French poetry. The poems in this radical volume frequently break with tradition, and deal with themes relating to decadence, eroticism, suffering, and an aspiration toward an ideal world. The final volume of Les Fleurs du mal was published posthumously in 1868, and it includes nearly all of Baudelaire’s poetry, written from 1840 until his death. 

Despite his inheritance of a respectable fortune at the age of 21, making his way financially wasn’t easy for Baudelaire, as he had a taste for extravagance. By 1844, just two years later, he had spent nearly half of his inheritance, and he had become known in artistic circles as a “dandy” and “free spender.” Baudelaire “regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner.” During the course of his life, he borrowed from his mother an estimated total of 20,473 francs, and much of what is known of his later life comes from his correspondence with her. Baudelaire faced increasing financial difficulties toward the end of his life; he was forced to sell off many of his possessions in order to pay his debts and was frequently in and out of debtors’ prison.

In 1859 Baudelaire’s health began to deteriorate due to chronic illness brought on by stress, poverty, syphilis, and his long-term use of laudanum, a tincture of opium. In 1861 his financial difficulties increased when his publisher went bankrupt. Despite these difficulties, Baudelaire continued to write and publish his works, and he gained recognition for his critical essays.

Baudelaire died in 1867 at the age of 47, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest poets in French literature. He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Baudelaire’s mother died in 1871, outliving her son by almost four years.

Despite Baudelaire’s relatively slim production of poetry, his work has had a huge influence on Modernism, a movement in the arts that aims to break with classical and traditional forms of expression, and which embraced experimentation and “a focus on the individual experience.” Baudelaire is noted for his innovative use of creative language, as well as for his use of symbolism and imagery in his poetry, and his work has had a significant impact on later poets.

Some of the quotes that Charles Baudelaire is known for include:

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days — but not without poetry.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Nothing can be done except little by little.

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

by David Jay Brown