A Whitman Bicentennial Album: The Celebratory Procession

Abstract

In his influential essay “The Poet,” Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that the Poet is one whose vision “turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.” Responding to Emerson’s description of poetic activity and justifying his claim to the title of The Poet, Walt Whitman declares that “All is a procession, / The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion” (“I Sing the Body Electric”). “Procession” can evoke the ceremonious and often sombre, as Webster’s 1844 definition confirms by positioning three common processional scenarios side-by-side—a clergy’s procession into church, a triumphal procession, and a funeral procession— followed by a quote, “Him all his train / Follow’d in bright procession,” from Milton’s Paradise Lost, representative of stately Old World poetic tradition. But Webster truncates Milton’s description of the celestial procession, omitting the wherefore of their movements: the procession followed in order to “behold Creation and the wonders of His might,” after which came “acclamation and the sound symphonious of ten thousand Harps,” enough to make the “empyrean ring.” Milton describes a heavenly celebration, a birthday party for the new Creation, complete with a choir, a band, and swingin’ incense. It is perhaps that celebratory strain that Emerson’s Poet can discern within the universe, rather than a funeral march or a victor’s triumphant entry through the gates of a captured city. The celebratory procession is the very basis of Whitman’s poetic project, in which the celebration of self sings its way into ever-widening circles, until all space and all time find symphonious inclusion. Like Milton’s angels on the first Sabbath, Whitman’s fans and followers have been celebrating a momentous birthday this year. Each party, performance, poetry reading, exhibition, and lecture has added its voice to a symphony that carries Whitman’s memory and his poetry around the world. It doesn’t take the sensitivity of Emerson’s nearly-di-