Walt Whitman鈥檚 now-famous maxim about 鈥渃ontaining the multitudes鈥 has often been understood as a metaphor for the democratizing impulses of the young American nation. But did these impulses extend across the color line? Early in his career, especially in the manuscripts leading up to the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the poet espoused a rather progressive outlook on race relations within the United States. However, as time passed, he steered away from issues of race and blackness altogether. These changing depictions and representations of African Americans in the poetic space of Leaves of Grass and Whitman鈥檚 other writings complicate his attempts to fully contain all of America鈥檚 subject-citizens within the national imaginary. As alluring as 鈥渃ontaining the multitudes鈥 might prove to be, African American poets and writers have been equally vexed by and attracted to Whitman鈥檚 acknowledgment of the promise and contradictions of the United States and their place within it.
Whitman Noir: Black America and the Good Gray Poet explores the meaning of blacks and blackness in Whitman鈥檚 imagination and, equally significant, also illuminates the aura of Whitman in African American letters from Langston Hughes to June Jordan, Margaret Walker to Yusef Komunyakaa. The essays, which feature academic scholars and poets alike, address questions of literary history, the textual interplay between author and narrator, and race and poetic influence. The volume as a whole reveals the mutual engagement with a matrix of shared ideas, contradictions, and languages to expose how Whitman influenced African American literary production as well as how African American Studies brings to bear new questions and concerns for evaluating Whitman.
鈥淎 tremendous collection. These essays probe, first, the treatment and stunning evasions of blacks and blackness in Whitman鈥檚 imagination and, second, the remaking of Whitman and his legacy by black writers. Readers of this book will find a poet who could never quite erase race and in the process was both deeply troubling and strangely enabling鈥攖hey鈥檒l find a Whitman Noir.鈥濃擪enneth M. Price, codirector, The Walt Whitman Archive
鈥淥ffering groundbreaking scholarship and intensely personal reflections, Whitman Noir demonstrates how the poet鈥檚 treatment of race in America troubled and inspired later generations of readers and poets, and continues to do so today. This timely collection explores Whitman鈥檚 shifting representations of African Americans in his poetry and prose, revealing the ways that his writings鈥攁nd erasures鈥攔eflect a nation both transformed and stubbornly unchanged by the Civil War.鈥濃擬artin T. Buinicki, author, Walt Whitman鈥檚 Reconstruction: Poetry and Publishing between Memory and History
