Whitman's Voice

photo: ralph murre

Whitman’s Voice

by Susan M. Firer

He does not sing the poem like Yeats

reciting “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”;  he

simply continent speaks each word, & in between

each bump on the wax cylinder recording

Thomas Edison made of Whitman in 1890,

you hear another Whitman.

You hear Whitman

            interviewing P.T. Barnum,

            with Tom Thumb & the orangutan,

            Mlle. Jane, in the background.

You hear all the gaslight

            drenched operas he attended

            & even smell the peculiar

            l9th century perfumes.

You hear Whitman’s

            body kicks & swim splash & cold water scrubs

            at Gray’s Swimming Bath at the bottom

            of Fulton Street, and

You hear him

            at the corner of Fulton & Cranberry Streets

            in the Rome brothers’ print shop

            setting the type for the first

            LEAVES OF GRASS.

You hear all

            the Nor’easters he sat outside through

            under his tree in the healing country

            under his gray wool blanket

            recovering from a stroke, and

You can even hear the Civil War

            hospital kisses he soft lip-pressed on the often

            never-shaved cheeks of the dying

            soldiers he nursed.

You hear him ask them: “Stamps?

            Licorice?

            Can I write a letter home for you?”

And in his American-formed voice inflected with canaries,

            locomotives, and turkeys,

            you hear electricity & his wild throat

            muscles.  Each syllable is a tableau:

Six year old Walter in the arms of Lafayette,

young teacher Walter playing baseball with his students,

Whitman at Poe’s reburial in Baltimore

            (the only literary figure to attend),

            Walter in Brooklyn purchasing his first

            silver watch, gold pencil, frock coat,

            & loud singing on top an omni-

            bus in New York.

You see Whitman in the Astor Library

            blowy from the ferry, a copy of CONSUELO

            in his hands, a bit of George Sand’s

            cigar smoke about his ears & beard.

            You see coffee & beefsteak eating Walt &

            l857 hard pressed for money Walt

            watching his Talbot painting and his

            few other belongings taken by lawyers

& carried out & through the streets –

            all for a $200 debt.

You see Walt visiting

            with brown velvet-suited Oscar

            Wilde, with Longfellow, with Thoreau,

            &, of course, with Emerson.

There’s Walt swimming & loping at Coney Island

            & writing: “The polka increases in popularity,”

            & even (I am not making this up) walking

            & loving walking the streets of Milwaukee!

You see nude sun-bathed, mud-bathed lame Walt

            at Timber Creek wrestling with saplings

            trying to strengthen his stroke-weakened

            arms & legs.

You even see old white-bearded Whitman

            napping in his wheelchair

            in front of his Mickle Street Camden window,

            like a “great old Angora Tom,”

            like a snowy owl.

And in each syllable, you hear transformation.

            You hear his dream

breath, his sighs

as he studies the night

            sky patterns, hieroglyphics,

            phrenology, & lexicology.

You hear him call through the centuries

            to all his young apprentices:  “Hen,

            oh, why, Hen.”

And if you are very still when listening,

            you can hear him rubbing lilacs

            in his beautiful, white beard, & I swear,

            you can hear him swallow a strawberry.

Here, on my CD made from Edison’s wax cylinders

is sapling planting Walt,

America’s great slang coloratura

word hero, plainly speaking; venerable Walt

saying his hymn of vowels & consonants.

And really his voice is much like the Long Island

pond and spring water he wrote about:

“The water itself has a character of its own,”

said Whitman, “It is deliciously sweet

--it almost has a flavor.”

~ previously published in Milwaukee Does Strange Things To People

Lilacs

digital collage: ralph murre

Lilacs

by Susan M. Firer

Before his doctor cut into his

7^th cervical disk,

like an old Swede’s goat he clumped

climbed the black garage roof next door

thump thump to throw

down on me the lightest, most

fragrant bunches of lilacs.  I lusted

for the lilacs, the drunk

lilacs, the purple flabellum,

spodumene, sumptuous benedictional lilacs,

the Nerudian excessive lilacs.

Neruda’s desk came to him from a wave

off Isla Negra.  “Matilde! Matilde!

My desk!  My desk!” he yelled,

spotting the wood in the ocean.

Together Matilde and Neruda

“went down to the beach and sat

on the sand, waiting for a wave

to wash up the wood….”

Neruda placed the wood ocean view

in front of a window and placed

a photo of young Whitman on it &

a photo of old Whitman on it.

How Whitman loved lilacs.  You can

smell lilacs when you read Whitman.

Breathing lilacs our house falls dark

around us, drops like night clothing

days’ faces.  Convalescent hearted

lilac pilgrims cannot stop breathing

the wet dark lilac nights.

Put a bed of lilacs down

and I will meet you.  We will not sleep.

Friends all over are falling.

There are so many ways to fall.

Lilacs offer their transfusions.

In the Houghton Mifflin New

College Edition of AMERICAN HERITAGE

DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH

LANGUAGE, on page 757 (like/limb),

they show photos of the perfectly-postured

lily & the very well-behaved lily

of the valley.  What about lilacs?  I write

the editors.  What about scratch & sniff lilacs?

All over late May, lilacs like burglars

surround outbuildings,

& houses, & hospitals, & bus stops.

(On your way to your morning

bus, if you stop to pick Gabriel’s lilacs,

you will miss your bus.)

Lilacs heal lovers’

quarrels, and I swear they floated

the ship from Singapore

anchored outside our Memorial

Day lake breakwater,

making the huge ship look

like a ghost ship,

floating on lilac water.  You

already know a lot about a girl

if you see her carrying a sprig of lilacs,

if she tucks a sprig in her hair,

if she bathes in an evening tub

full of lilacs and water.

Night commendatory lilacs brush

the windows with lavender stars

of fragrance.  Dirigibles

of lilacs cover us beautifully

as a garden’s bell cloche.

I raise my lilac scratched arms

for the mammogram lady.

She arranges my breasts on her

just spray cleaned plastic plate

like cut flowers.  I believe in evening

she might be giving a formal dinner.

So much is conjecture,

subjective, history.

In the Downer Theatre yellow-starred,

emerald-green-tiled ticket booth,

the ticket seller sits like a fortune

teller.  She has put a wavy-script sign

in her window.  It reads: HOLD ON

TO YOUR MONEY OR IT WILL BLOW AWAY.

It should read: LILACS ARE ALWAYS

LOVELY.  They sign pleasure (On our

dark, night living

room floor, he surrounds me with lilacs

& whispers, “Now you mustn’t move).

Tulips & pumpkins trip me.

I feel misplaced as poodles

in Lake Michigan.  Poodles in Lake Michigan!

My mother told me I was mailed to earth

in an envelope of lilacs,

there is not one reason to disbelieve her.

In lilac days, my mouth full

of ripe, yellow starfruit,

I swallow and listen to the already almost

lilium & tomatoes & delphiniums &

the always too brief flowering lilacs.

In the dark I sneak

out on the soft, moon shine yarrow-

yellow-caterpillar like seed softened

sidewalks.  I stand pelted by soft

green maple seed wings that helix fall

wind whip to earth.  (In sunlight

the children will split & wear

on their noses the same winged seeds.)

I stand in the ample

lilacs, the only flower with enough

fragrance to convert everyone

in the city to crime.

Dorothy visited the Emerald City.  Yearly

I surrender myself to the unrestrained

wash rabble lilacs,

the windy caravan of lilacs,

the narcoleptic steambath

invitation of lilacs.

                        ~ first published in The Iowa Review