Walt Whitman and Harry Stafford, 1878.
A Blog Post by Reuben Gelley Newman
To see the first half of this two-part post, click here.
National context undeniably informs the poetry we create, and America’s conflict and social upheaval during the late 19th century often intersected with Whitman’s personal life and poetry. He tended wounded soldiers in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War, bearing witness to the turmoil it unleashed. Readers both lambasted and celebrated his overtly hetero- and homo-erotic poems, which inspired British intellectuals to advocate for acceptance of homosexuals in the 1870s and 80s. Although he outwardly denied any homosexuality, he had relationships with men almost 40 years younger than him, including George and Susan Stafford’s son, Harry, whom Whitman met at a printing shop. (There’s an obvious power imbalance considering the age gap and Whitman’s cultural status, and it’s impossible to tell exactly how equitable the relationship was. From letters, it seems like it was relatively consensual, if tumultuous, but we should probably still be skeptical.)
Drawing on these rich and complex experiences, he wrote obviously political poems, such as his elegies for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain, My Captain.” His erotic poems, including the famous homoerotic “Calamus” ones, were also socially conscious in their disregard for Victorian prudishness. But his expressions of indolence — particularly during his time at the Staffords’ farm in southern New Jersey — can hardly be political, right?
I’m not so sure. Today, I don’t feel as if “indolent” poems, or poems that express joy more broadly, get all that much traction in the poetry market. (Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities seem like exceptions to this.) But reading Specimen Days, I wonder if indolence, in the sense of “love of ease,” can be a counterpart to and part of the political.
For poets from marginalized backgrounds, or even for Whitman — who, as I said in Part 1, was disabled later in life, though hardly “marginalized” — perhaps writing openly about pure joy or indolence could be empowering. Recall the definition of “indolent” that reads “free from pain.” Freedom from pain, of course, is virtually impossible for any human to experience, and that kind of indolence might be even rarer for marginalized poets. Still, “Indolent” writing could serve as an important contrast to taut, emotional poems that explore political situations or recount injustices against the speaker. It could also simply exist by itself. Although it’s important to be aware of the political, no one has to write “political” poetry. It’s a political choice to write a “nature poem,” say, whatever that is — but it’s not necessarily a bad choice.
And that brings us back to Indolent Books. As Michael said, “indolent” refers to some of our “slowly progressing” poets. (Although not all of them are slowly progressing—take Logan February, who has published two chapbooks and whose first full-length collection is coming out next year!) But Indolent’s mission is also strikingly political. Look no further than our online projects What Rough Beast and HIV Here & Now, and our mission statement:
Ultimately, Indolent publishes books the editors care about. The main criteria are that the work be innovative, provocative, risky, and relevant. Indolent is queer flavored but inclusive and maintains a commitment to diversity among authors, artists, designers, developers, and other team members.
Does this political mission mesh with the historical definitions of “indolent” I’ve discussed? I don’t know. What I do know is that “indolent” and “political” poetry have coexisted for centuries, since well before our good gray poet. As Whitman realized, literature can be an escape, a fantasy, and a utopia: a place free from pain. But his optimistic vision of America was also grounded in political reality. I think such grounding is deeply necessary for poets, both personally and collectively. We need not be optimistic, of course; our poems can turn grief into anger. But whatever our viewpoint, through writing our own hurt and our nation’s, we might begin to free ourselves of pain.
In addition to interning here at Indolent, where he edits the blog, Reuben Gelley Newman is an undergraduate at Swarthmore College. His work appears in Alexandria Quarterly, What Rough Beast, and HIV Here & Now, and is forthcoming in The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, 2nd Edition.