Celebrating Walt Whitman
by Sonnet Graham
Tuesday February 7, 2006
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me/ As good belongs to you." Walt Whitman wrote those words in 1855, over 150 years ago, but last week Suzanne Gardiner and other SLC staff and students gave them a new voice.
"In many ways, Whitman’s the beginning of American poetry, and ‘Song of Myself’ is…utterly relevant, huge in its power and scope," Jeffrey McDaniel said, organizer of the February 1 reading. A group of thirty-nine readers participated in a full-length reading of Whitman’s "Song of Myself," a subset of Leaves of Grass. Thirteen readers were faculty, among them Kurt Brown, who received a standing ovation for his interpretation of section forty-four.
"I was blown away by how emotional the experience got towards the end. Kurt Brown got us out of our seats, and Bill Shullenberger pried open our hearts," McDaniel said, "We are blessed to be in a place where there is such a love for art, where poets are taken seriously." The love of poetry was necessary for both audience and readers alike, as the performance lasted three hours, including intermission. The length, however, did not seem to bother the audience, which packed Heimbold’s theater to support friends and professors.
"Some of my past professors read that evening, and I wanted to see them express themselves through the work," sophomore Hannah Lansburgh said. "Two of my first year classes went over this poem last year, and I’ve realized the impression it’s had on American literature."
Readers met weekly on Tuesday nights for practices, which ran for about two or three hours. During that time, members of the cast dropped in, read a few sections, took suggestions from peers and discussed whose voices would sound best for each section.
"I love rehersals!" Christina Lancaster said. "While they are tremendously grueling…I really got to know the poem a thousand times better than I ever would have been able to on my own, because we have some pretty intense discussions about even the smallest word. I always leave feeling like I’ve done something good for myself, like a yoga class or a shot of wheat grass."
"In addition to weekly practices, my group split up our reading in the Tea Haus. Then, on the night of the reading, we ate chocolate cake," said Jenn Hanks, a sophomore reader. Hanks said private practices were sometimes necessary because of the length of individual sections. Seniors Sam Conway, Eli Rosenblatt and Corey Walker read section 33, which is seven pages long.
"Song of Myself" originally appeared without section breaks. Whitman later added these in 1867; in 1881 he removed the stanza numbering, which made the poem’s structure almost Biblical. Because the poem was written as one long piece, some of the section breaks can seem quite arbitrary. It was the responsibility of the readers to discern why Whitman made the choices he did—not only in section breaks, but also punctuation, which can appear as a convoluted mass of commas and ellipses depending on the edition one is reading. To avoid the monotonous tone of a single interpretation, each section was given to a different reader.
"It’s a poem that wants to wrap its arms around a whole nation, so it makes sense to have a variety of readers," said McDaniel. "I’m a little afraid of marathon reading, but…the reading evolved into one giant highlight." Even Whitman, who, as he said, "possessed the origin of all poems," could not have asked for more.
