I always start planning my Halloween costume early. Sometimes, though, I have trouble coming up with an idea that really represents me and what I care about, while still being fun and hip. Luckily, Poets.org has a convenient list of Easy Poet Costume Ideas.
For a Whitman costume, they suggest:
A beard
A simple collared shirt
Rustic pants
A floppy brown hat
They also recommend hiding butterflies in your beard and rolling in the grass. I might suggest carrying a lilac or two.
The idea here, I guess, is to make poetry fun and youthful? That’s certainly a noble goal. But on some level, suggesting that girls dress up as Emily Dickinson for Halloween seems strange. (Aren’t girls supposed to dress as scantily as possible for Halloween, anyway? Dickinson is decidedly un-sexy.)
I guess what bothers me is how institutional the whole thing feels. Like when your mother gives you a Barry Manilow CD for Christmas and says something like, “I thought you’d like it.” If we’re trying to bring Whitman–or poetry at large–to the youthful masses, is this really productive?
If a member of their target audience had put this together, I’d imagine the lineup would be much different. How many people my age really love Sappho? Enough to dress up as her for Halloween? Poe makes sense on a Halloween list, but where’s Charles Bukowski or Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac? Where’s Nikki Giovanni or Maya Angelou? For better or worse, I think my generation is more in tune with (or at least more aware of) these poets than with Williams. I’m not saying Poets.org should pander to a certain demographic, but that seems to be what they’ve set out to do, and they’ve done it badly.
Or maybe I’m completely off the mark, and they’re trying to get my mom to read poetry. In which case I can only say, “Good luck.”
Dickinson is totally sexy. Well, at least some of her poetry is. Have you read any of her master poems? If you read them in the context of critic William Shurr, they are pretty hot.
But yeah, good luck getting “kids these days” to understand your Whitman costume. They would probably think you’re Ian McKellan or Zack Galafinakis or a hipster kid or Santa Claus off duty etc. etc. Then again, I’m pretty sure the last book “they” read was Twilight, so I wouldn’t get too upset about it 🙂
I couldn’t delete the first comment, so here is a re-edit.
Dickinson is totally sexy. Well, at least some of her poetry is. Have you read any of her master poems? If you read them in the context of critic William Shurr, they are pretty hot.
But yeah, good luck getting “kids these days” to understand your Whitman costume. They would probably think you’re Ian McKellan or Zack Galafinakis or a hipster kid or Santa Claus off duty etc. etc. Then again, I’m pretty sure the last book “they” read was Twilight, so I wouldn’t get too upset about it.
Speaking of Dickinson, it is impossible to overlook the similarities between her and Whitman. I use the word similarities, of course, as opposed to influences, since Dickinson was not published until 1890…four years after her death. In life, Dickinson was averse to sharing her poetry with anyone, fearing judgment. However, she and Whitman shared many things in common. Firstly, they both revered nature as a spiritual and renewing force, attempting to become one with the splendor of the world and placing existential value on a thing as little or common as a blade of grass. Dickinson has said that she has learned more about God from a birdsong than she ever did in church.
Dickinson’s style, vastly different than Whitman’s long lines at first glance, actually has quite a bit in common with his verse. She employs her trademark dash to emphasize or give pause to a thought, as we have seen Whitman utilize as well. She makes use of repetition as a means to emphasize her point, and even throws an occasional list into the mix. Many times, she makes use of both high and low language, playing with conventions while trying something new. Most importantly, she places great value on the use of symbols that translate from poem to poem, just as Whitman reiterated the importance of his lilacs.
Finally, although Dickinson lacks much of the multi-dimensionalism that Whitman possesses (she does not, for instance, delve into politics), she is as concerned as he is with the content of her poetry. She grapples with ideas of death and immortality, and frets incessantly over the effectiveness of her poetry as a voice of human concern and experience. She longs for her verse to be “alive,” which is probably the same reason that Whitman edited Leaves of Grass as much as he did. So, it seems that poetic conventions are not the only things these two literary genuises had in common.