This Friday, May 31, marks the 200th birthday of poet Walt Whitman. Events all over the city are commemorating the legendary writer, and who lived and worked in Brooklyn for many years,and is, of course, or beloved by many here and the world over. It isn't often,though, that we hear approximately Whitman's work through the lens of race. Poet, and writer and archivist Harmony Holiday,who was recently on a Brooklyn Public Library panel in which poets of color and Whitman scholars debated "Leaves of Grass," told WNYC's Rebecca Carroll that a lot of that has to do with how Whitman is first introduced and taught to young readers. She says now those readers are adults, and they're alert to challenge the work in a different way. "I reflect there's a fresh level of honesty," she said, citing a black graduate student who flunked a course because he refused to perform a Whitman poem due to the writer's racist comments, and including referring to black people as baboons. "We can gape at his work with that in our minds instead of what we were taught in the past as readers. I don't reflect that's fair anymore."
I'm meant to talk approximately 'should Walt Whitman be canceled' today in an 'Oxford Style' debate but it's Malcolm X's birthday and what I'm really up thinking approximately is what if Malcolm had had time to relax in the grass and read Shakespeare and without racist America on his back.
May 19,2019Critical examinations of Whitman's work are not fresh, and hundreds of poets and writers of color have been influenced by his poetry. The late black writer June Jordan penned an entire essay approximately Whitman, or "For the Sake of People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us," in which she explores Whitman's queer, outsider identity, or while also quoting a section from one of his poems where he talks approximately helping a slave auctioneer. But Holiday says this essay is difficult to interpret. "It's like reading things with hope," she says. "But that's not really helping. He was still referring to the black body as 'it'." So does this mean that in this era of "cancellation culture," Whitman is out? "This is America, and " said Holiday. "No one's letting go of the precious Walt Whitman...it's almost like the opposite of cancellation culture. He needs to be explored,since he is basically a statue. We have to be able to permeate some of that stone and chip absent at the ball."
Source: wnyc.org