Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN Documentary: Whitman - Songs of the Poet

AURAL TAPESTRY
“Walt Whitman: Father of Modern Poetry”
PART I: “Songs of the Poet”

MUSIC - “Non piu mesta” - Marilyn Horne DUR: 2’30”
Track 4 - Start-00.42/05.38-7.30

ID TAPE - “Weaving…an Aural Tapestry” (9”)
DAVID (over music): On an unusually warm June evening in 1852, the Italian contralto Marietta Alboni made her American debut at New York’s Metropolitan Hall. Her finale- “Non piu mesta” from Rossini’s opera of Cinderella- was said to have “electrified the audience.” The effect Alboni had on one spectator, who enjoyed the relaxed, all-male atmosphere of the theater’s upper tiers, may have changed the course of world literature. He was a 33 year old journalist named Walt Whitman.

MUSIC UP FOR VOCAL (at 42”)
TAPE - FW: “The influence of opera…
LW: …he was not humble.” DUR: 28”
DAVID: Gary Schmidgall is the author of “Walt Whitman: A Gay Life.” But for anyone wishing to understand the man who spent half of his life on his masterpiece -one epic volume of poetry entitled “Leaves of Grass”
-the place to begin is in Camden, New Jersey where the writer spent his final years. Curator Margaret O’Neill guided me through the simple two-story house which -by using photographs of the period- has recently been artfully restored to the way it looked when Whitman lived there.
TAPE - FW: “(footsteps)…
LW: …person behind the persona.” DUR: 2’24”
TAPE - FW: “He had been in New York…
LW: …prior to LoG is doggerel.” DUR: 54”
DAVID/POEM: “O, mighty powers of Destiny!
When from this coil of flesh I’m free-
When through my second life I rove,
Let me but find one heart to love,
As I would wish to love:
(Let me but meet a single breast,
Where this tired soul its hope may rest,
In never-dying faith; ah, then,
That would be bliss all free from pain,
And sickness of the heart.)
This from the so-called “father of modern poetry”? In 1840, that the 21 year old Whitman seemed to be imitating the style of contemporaries like Edgar Allan Poe should come as no surprise according to professor-emeritus Daniel Hoffman, author of “Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe.”
TAPE - FW: “If Whitman’s very early…
LW: …caterpillar into a butterfly.” DUR: 2’22”
MUSIC: “The Horticultural Wife” - NY Vocal Arts DUR: 1’10”
Track 3 - From start
DAVID (over music bridge at 43”): When Whitman was young, his favorite singers were The Hutchinson Family, part of a wave of traveling family minstrels that swept America in the mid-1800’s. (MUSIC UP; DAVID AT 1’10” and cross-fade into opera) But once he moved to New York City, his taste in music changed.
MUSIC: “Bolero” - Marilyn Horne DUR: 36”
Track 3 (Recital cd)
DAVID: The celebrated Italian opera star Marietta Alboni had studied with Rossini and specialized in his music. The composer had once unkindly referred to her as “the elephant who swallowed a nightingale,” a remark that was repeated in New York. But Whitman once wrote he was tempted “to kneel down before her in grateful acknowledgment of supreme musical divinity.”

TAPE - FW: “Whitman said he attended…
LW: …operatic repertory as Alboni.” DUR: 1’26”
MUSIC: “Tancredi” - Marilyn Horne DUR: 1’25”
Track 3 - From 01.23-02.50
DAVID/POEM: “The teeming lady comes,
The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, blooming mother,
Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.”
…
“Here, take this gift!
I was reserving it for some hero, orator, or general,
One who should serve the good old case, the progress
and freedom of the race, the cause of my Soul;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just
as much as any.”
MUSIC UP TO END.
TAPE - FW: “In Leaves of Grass…
LW: …music was clearly in his veins.” DUR: 50”
MUSIC: “Rocky Hill” - Art of the Banjo DUR: 1’00”
Track 10 - From start (David in FAST!)
DAVID/POEM: “I Hear America Singing”
“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or
leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench,
the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day- at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. (Dur. 1’00)

TAPE - FW: “The other thing is not…
LW: …stage-stealing style.” DUR: 1’26”
SOUND FX: CD PE 1 - Track 5 “Morning Park”
DAVID/POEM- “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer
grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this
soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same,
and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.” (DUR: 40”)
TAPE - FW: “I think what makes Whitman…
LW: …to convey his own identity.” DUR: 1’06”
MUSIC: “Sometimes with one I love” -T. Hampson DUR: 1’15”
Track 22 - from Start
DAVID: Baritone Thomas Hampson singing a poem set to music by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ned Rorem. Sometime after the first two editions of “Leaves of Grass”, Whitman met a young Brooklyn driver named Fred Vaughan. Letters between the two hint that their relationship was closer than just “friends” and Gary Schmidgall believes Vaughan may have been the inspiration for Whitman’s celebrated Calamus poems which first appeared in the 1860 edition.
TAPE - FW: “In that edition is a series…
LW: …that Whitman ever wrote.” DUR: 53”
MUSIC: “We two boys…” - Thomas Hampson DUR: 1’48”
Track 23 - From 00.53-02.40
DAVID: One the most famous Calamus poems, set to music by Michael Tilson Thomas. But others are virtually unknown except to scholars because Whitman removed them from all later editions, finding them perhaps too revealing about his attractions, according to Gary Schmidgall. (MUSIC OUT AT 02.59)
TAPE - FW: “His early editions were…
LW: …a city of eros.” DUR: 45”
SOUND FX: CD PE 3 - Track 4 “Light wind/cold”
DAVID/POEM:
“Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
…
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
The poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry,
and that all men carry,
(Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like
me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding,
love-climbers, and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love,
breasts of love, bellies press’d and glued together with
love…
(Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep,
one with an arm slanting down across and below the
waist of the other…) (DUR: 1’00)

TAPE - FW: “There’s one other line…
LW: …between Whitman and the reader.” DUR: 1’13”
MUSIC: Raun’s Waltz - Art of Banjo DUR: 45”
Track 11 - From start
DAVID/POEM: “My songs cease, I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I hid I advance
personally solely to you.
Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man,
(Is it night? Are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms-
-decease calls me forth.
…
Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
I give it especially to you, do not forget me…” (40”)
START TO FADE MUSIC; NEXT MUSIC IN HARD and FASTFADE BANJO
MUSIC: “Cruda Sorte!” - Marilyn Horne DUR: 40”
Track 2 - From Start
AS CUED, SLOW FADE IN NEXT MUSIC
(fade out opera as Marching Band takes over)
DAVID: On the evening of April 13, 1865 Walt Whitman attended the opera. (Start next MUSIC cue) Upon leaving, he heard the news that Fort Sumter had been bombed, signaling the start of the American Civil War - a conflict that would threaten the heart of a nation and the soul of a poet.
MUSIC: “Camptown Races” - Primary Colors DUR: 1’15”
Track 1 - From Start
DAVID (outro): Next week - Walt Whitman: The Good Gray Poet. My thanks today to technician Eric Mulder. I’m DS - thanks for listening!