A Mixtape for Walt Whitman
I’ve been into these historical birthdays, lately. A few weeks ago it was the centennial of Robert Johnson, the musician, and then last week was number 70 for Bob Dylan, a musician and a poet, and this week marks what would have been the 192nd birthday of Walt Whitman, a poet and a patriot. One hundred and ninety-two years! Think about how long before the Civil War this dude was born, and then think about how relevant and readable and accessible he still is, and then kick back in a hammock and listen to these tunes I am quite sure he would enjoy while you read some of his invigorating, thoughtful, and exquisitely-worded work. 
Whitman was quite in tune with the appeal and power of music — his poems are full of it, from “Song of Myself” to “I Hear America Singing” to “I Sing the Body Electric” to his use of chorus and verse alternation and sing-song rhythms. And his songs were not only ecstatic but distinctly American, most notably his epic collection Leaves of Grass. So to start, we have Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” an epic itself, which tells the story of the American Dream set to Bach’s music. It also served as a social apology for America’s actions during the Vietnam war and Whitman, the voice of justice and equality for his generation, would appreciate the progressive standpoint. If Whitman were to “hear america singing” today, it might sound a lot like Paul Simon.
For Leaves of Grass we’ve also got My Morning Jacket’s “Golden” (Whitman: “I loafe and invite my soul/I lean and loafe at my ease”), Bright Eyes “Approximated Sunlight” (Whitman: “Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me”), and Bob Dylan’s “Song To Woody” (Whitman: “These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me.” Bob: “I’m walking a road many men have gone down.”) And the whole joyful adventurous sentiment is summed up in The Be Good Tanyas’ “The Littlest Birds.” They sing “it’s times like these I feel so small and wild” and “I got the wandering blues / and I’m gonna quit these rambling ways/ one of these days soon.”
For his part, WW is all on board this personal-freedom train, going in for his chances, spending for vast returns, “Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill / Scattering it freely forever.” It’s like T.I. always said in “Top Back:” “What I need a roof for? Replace it with the sky.”
M. Ward’s “For Beginners” hides a grave message beneath its pleasant singsong exterior and handclaps; it is a call for the simple life, for ignorance as bliss, and for a return to the natural world, much in the same way that Whitman’s “When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer” scorns dreary astronomy lectures, proofs, and diagrams in favor of gazing “in perfect silence at the stars.”
And when Whitman wasn’t positively giddy about America, he was busy thinking…about sex. Yeahhhh, Whitman wrote a lot about it, with men, women, whatever — but “A Woman Waits for Me” reads like a very very very early draft of Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” …or Akon’s “Smack That.” Whitman writes, ”I will dismiss myself from impassive women/ I will go to her who waits for me./ …yet all were lacking if sex were lacking.” Oh come on! ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN. But wait! Before you jump to conclusions, the poem takes a turn: “[Women] are not one jot less than I am.” ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE WALT WHITMAN TO BE SO DEMOCRATIC AND EGALITARIAN AND A FEMINIST.
Yet for all his rejoicing and celebration of life and sex, WW was not without his dark side, and the mournful “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d” is proof of that. He is straight up melancholy here, moaning about “O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!” It’s a bit dramatic, yes, so he might like to hear a subtler, more artistic version of the same in Bonnie Prince Billy’s “I See A Darkness.” The most gorgeous of downers, Will Oldham croons, “Many times we’ve been out drinking, many times we’ve shared our thoughts / But have you ever noticed / the kind of thoughts I got?” (Cue thunder-clap and ghostly howls. They aren’t in the song, but that’s the feeling.) Same with “O Captain! My Captain!” which chronicles a sea voyage gone awry; for this, we have Okkervil River’s “John Allyn Smith Sails,” a dark incarnation of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B,” featuring a suicide and a slew of literary allusions. It’s not merely “Let me go home, I wanna go home” but “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”
Oh Whitman, we owe you far more than a playlist on your birthday, but this will have to do. You were a babe in daguerrotype and a wizard of words, encapsulating the life of the nation in a time of great turmoil; you were, in your own words, “The greatest poet…if he breathes into any thing that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur of life of the universe.” Happy 192, old man.
– Caroline Klibanoff
All goes onward and onward…
and nothing collapses,
and to die is different from what anyone supposed,
and luckier.
And this one, Walt Whitman, is for your niece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GDU6ns2mRM
Sorry, ladies – he’s ours. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnNr6lNxvc
“O Captain! My Captain!” was also a metaphor for the assassination of Abe Lincoln, so here’s A Short Reprise for the occasion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmWsNGJaZI
[...] So far we’ve seen the voice of a generation, the bluesman that started it all, and even the roots of lyrical poetry. But today we celebrate the would-be 59th birthday of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most [...]