Martin G. Murray: Walt Whitman celebrates DC, and DC celebrates Walt Whitman
“This is the city and I am one of the citizens,” Walt Whitman declared in his signature poem Song of Myself. “Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, … real estate and personal estate.”
Living in DC from 1863 to 1873, the poet immersed himself in the city’s life: ministering to the sick and wounded during the Civil War; chronicling the nation’s grief at President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination; toiling for Uncle Sam’s Justice Department; writing “squibs” for local and out-of-town newspapers; and forming loving friendships with soldiers, statesmen, and a very special streetcar conductor. All of this was fodder for Whitman’s magnum opus Leaves of Grass, the poetry collection that greatly expanded during his Washington years.
May 31, 2019, marks the poet’s bicentennial — and DC gets to immerse itself in all things Walt, as it hosts the Walt Whitman 200 Festival. Running from May 23 to June 3, the celebration features poetry readings, walking tours, library exhibits, writing workshops, concerts, and even a meditation inspired by Whitman’s poems. Sponsored by Humanities DC and organized by Beltway Poetry Quarterly editor Kim Roberts, the festival brings together nearly 30 separate arts, cultural, educational and commercial partners, each of which will host at least one event.
Fittingly, the festival kicks off with a marathon reading of Song of Myself at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 23, at Busboys and Poets, 450 K St. NW. Whitman’s signature poem bares spouses copulating, comrades kissing, apprentice-boys wrestling, slaves escaping, wolverines trapping, ploughers ploughing, souls fellating, mockingbirds mourning and preachers exhorting — all in unrhymed verse and narrated by a bearded, unkempt, T-shirt clad “rough”!
“Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals / I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young / Some suffer so much.” Whitman came to Washington to aid his brother who was injured in battle, and he remained to provide support and encouragement to the thousands of wounded and sick soldiers in the city’s Civil War hospitals. On Thursday, May 30, the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum will host a discussion by historian Jake Wynne on the key role these hospitals played during the war.
One day while riding a city horsecar, Whitman met and fell in love with its handsome young conductor, Pete Doyle. The two spent afternoons eating fruit at Center Market or attending Marine Band concerts, and evenings taking moonlit walks along the Potomac. I will share these and other stories of their life together on Saturday, June 1, when Washington Walks hosts a tour of Congressional Cemetery, which will include a visit to Doyle’s grave.
More music has been set to Whitman’s poetry than to the work of any other American poet, and the festival includes several opportunities to attend free and ticketed concerts: All Souls Unitarian Choir will perform on Sunday, May 26; soprano Jennifer-Piazza Pick and pianist Tim McReynolds are at the Arts Club on Friday, May 31; and Post-Classical Ensemble re-creates a Bernard Herrmann radio drama at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, June 1.
Living in the capital gave Whitman a bird’s-eye view of Lincoln as the president traveled from the White House to his summer retreat at the Old Soldier’s Home. “We have got so that we always exchange bows, and very cordial ones,” Whitman recalled. Walt was visiting his mother in Brooklyn for Easter in April 1865 when he learned of Lincoln’s assassination. Mother and son were so overcome with grief that they could neither eat nor drink, but only pass the newspapers to one another in silence. En route back to Washington, Whitman passed the funeral train carrying Lincoln’s corpse on its slow journey home to Springfield, Illinois. The poet memorialized the moment in the elegy When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. “Here coffin that slowly passes / I give you my sprig of lilac.” On Saturday, May 25, Lincoln’s Cottage will host a tour and discussion of the poet’s and president’s shared values and their belief in the common man.
Whitman was a true Washingtonian in terms of his employment by the federal government: first with the Army paymaster during the war, then with the Office of Indian Affairs, and finally with the attorney general’s office. Whitman found the work “mild and agreeable, and the place remarkably well suited to a lazy, elderly, literary gentleman.” Local historian Garrett Peck will explore Whitman’s workplaces in a tour hosted by Washington Walks on Saturday, May 25.
Like all artists, Whitman wrote drafts — many drafts — before his work was ready for publication. The Library of Congress, home to the largest collection of Whitman manuscripts, will display some priceless examples, along with portraits and letters, in an exhibition running through the summer.
The DC Public Library responds to Whitman’s exhortation, “Poets to come! … Arouse! for you must justify me …” by holding poetry-writing workshops at several of its branch libraries. And the Folger Shakespeare Library ends the festival with a celebratory reading of Whitman’s principal Washington works. The event on Monday, June 3, will feature poets Regie Cabico, Kyle Dargan, Melanie Henderson, Kim Roberts and Dan Vera, as well as Folger Shakespeare Library director Michael Witmore.
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged / Missing me one place search another / I stop somewhere waiting for you.” — Walt Whitman
Martin G. Murray, a Woodley Park resident, is founder of The Washington Friends of Walt Whitman.
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