To A Whitmanfowl

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) “alerted the English-speaking world to an American voice in poetry,”[1] and Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wanted to be that American voice. Endeavoring to fulfill requirements set forth by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1844 essay entitled “The Poet,” Whitman’s work reaches out beyond the page to each American individually. As required by Emerson, Whitman wrote about that with which he was intimately familiar, put content above poetic structure, and both saw and named on behalf of the people in an “organic” manner[2].

One can imagine Walt Whitman on the Brooklyn Ferry admiring a bird as Bryant did from an unknown location in his poem “To A Waterfowl.” America’s poet would not have adhered to conventional patterns of meter, rhyme, or verse length. Nor would his prose have contained alternating end-rhyme scheme or archaic language, which would not have been understood or appreciated by the common man. While Bryant’s poem requires effort to comprehend during initial digestion, Whitman’s version of the same subject matter would require less interpretation initially; however, masterfully crafted layers would become apparent with subsequent reading of the work. In this way, Whitman would have appealed to a wider variety of social classes and differing education levels. A barely literate rural farmer and a highly educated urban lawyer could each find understanding at a level appropriate to their life experience.

Had Whitman been challenged to rewrite “To A Waterfowl” for the American population, his first task would have been to remove any outdated vocabulary. Rhyme scheme, regular verse length, and adherence to poetic forms would have also been abandoned, but most importantly, Whitman’s work would have reached out to the reader personally in a comforting and welcoming manner. In Bryant’s time, “everyday language was considered too common for poetry.”[3] Upon seeing dost (v. 3), thy (v. 4, 8, 14, 17, 24, 26), thou (v. 3, 9, 22, 27), thee (v. 6), and contractions used in Elizabethan English such as seek’st (v. 9), o’er (24), and thou’rt (v. 28), Whitman would have immediately replaced them with common tongue equivalents. Similarly, uncommon words (unless their use was intentional) that the majority of the population could not grasp would be altered. “Whither” (v. 1) would be downgraded to where; “plashy” (v. 9) would be marsh or wetlands, and “marge” (v. 10) would be shore. At the very least, “chaféd” (v. 12) would have lost the accent, but more likely would have been simply replaced with rough and raw. “Aright” (v. 32) may also have been changed to express the author’s view of life’s virtuous path more clearly.

Whitman would then have engaged in the process of transforming Bryant’s structured stanzas into free verse. His loosely defined stanzas vary in length between a few lines and nearly a whole page, so Bryant’s quatrains would not have been an option. The eight four-line stanzas would likely have been consolidated, with line spacing deleted, and sentences from all stanzas combined into actual paragraphs in order to better paraphrase them. Rhyming verse ends would be removed, and sentences would end with commas unless an exclamation point or question mark was in use.

Most importantly, Whitman’s version would reach out to the reader in a second person point of view. A sense of companionship, support, and love of humanity would have been carefully woven into the fabric of the piece, and readers would know that Whitman was one of them. However, in this third and most crucial point, an irreconcilable conflict arises that would have changed Bryant’s theme too drastically for Whitman to have been seriously considered for a rewrite of “To A Waterfowl”. Bryant’s direct address is to an animal, but though frequently present in Whitman’s poetry, nature is not addressed directly by America’s poet; Whitman reserves that intimacy for humans alone. Further, while Bryant expresses concern for the bird’s welfare against hunters in the second stanza, “Vainly the fowler’s eye mighty mark thy distant flight, to do the wrong,” Whitman himself relays his carnivorous tendencies and appreciation for the hunt commonly.

In “Song of Myself,”[4] he states, “Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt…Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game” (p. 29, v. 175 & 178). Whitman also provides evidence of relating on a personal level to the human hunters and not the hunted animals, “My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket” (p. 64, v. 1264). Even the act of killing itself is shared from the human perspective, “I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue” (p. 49, v. 806). Whitman then discusses the hunt for waterfowl specifically, “The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches” (p. 32, v. 269), and “My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble” (p. 31, v. 237).

            Nevertheless, though Whitman would not have addressed an animal directly, and his perspective would have been from a human hunter’s point of view, his belief that he “could turn and live with the animals” (p 45. v. 684) will bridge the moral and philosophical differences on hunting that (in theory) would have made an exact thematic rewrite unlikely. Consequently, the hypothetical rewrite of William Cullen Bryant’s “To A Waterfowl” was accomplished utilizing Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (p. 24-66), “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (p. 67-71), and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (73-79) for reference; only minimal changes in diction and syntax were made to ensure the author’s voice was adequately represented while Bryant’s theme remained intact.

  

“To A Whitmanfowl”

To what place in the falling dew, through the sunset you descend?

Wild gander seek your flock through the cool night, (p. 32, v. 245)

Alone – but never alone. I was with you, (p. 67, v. 21)

Just as you look on the river and sky, so I felt, (p. 67, v. 22)

Distance avails not, I believe in those wing’d purpose. (p. 67, v. 20, p. 31, v. 239)

You hermit withdrawn to yourself, avoiding the hunters, (p. 74, v. 21)

Limitless out of the dusk, out of the clouds and sky, (p. 76, v. 101)

Silhouettes of black on red, against the horizon, 

Soar in the heavens, loose the stop from your throat, (p. 26, v. 84)

Shall I join you in earth of reeds – earth of dark mottling the tide of the river? (p. 38, v. 42)

There in the weedy lake and shores of water – wide, dusk, and dim, (p. 79, v. 206)

Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, (p. 77, v. 124)

Or to the gray walls of the granite by the sea, (p. 68, v. 45)

To the ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, (p. 78, v. 156)

Finding purpose and place in the wintry sky, (p. 32, v. 248)

Alone high in the limitless heavens you labor, (p. 29, v.175)

As I watch’d where you pass’d - not lost in your migrations of flight, (p. 75, v. 63)

And the season approaching, your wings busy with purpose, (p. 77, v. 114)

High in the air and the gradual edging toward the south, (p. 68, v. 28)

Not to stop this day and night with me, to loafe with me on the grass, (p. 25, v. 33, p. 26, v. 84)

The time has come, though you stop not here to-day or to-night. (p. 68, v. 53)

You, coming home with the silent and dark night sky, (p. 48, v. 782)

And the summer approaching with richness, shaded ledges and rest await you! (p. 77, v. 114, p. 41, v. 529)

And you with your comrades in the bending reeds, (p. 78, v. 169)

With a nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! (p. 41, v. 534)

Concluded, away in the heavens of the night sky, and you were gone, (p. 75, v. 65)

I receive you with free sense at last, (p. 71, v. 127)

A minute, and your flight settles on my brain - but I listened close! (p. 44, v. 657, p. 32, v. 247)

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, (p. 77, v. 136)

By your wing, encompassing worlds and volumes of worlds, (p. 42, v. 565)

My knowledge, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, (p. 42, v. 576)

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, (p. 77, v. 140)

And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! (p. 77, v. 141)

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[1] “William Cullen Bryant.” Poetry Foundation. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/william-cullen-bryant. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017.

[2] “How Walt Whitman Became Emerson’s “Poet.”. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017. https://sites.google.com/site/ishpemingwriter/home/literary-essays/how-walt-whitman-became-emerson-s-poet

[3] “Lone Wandering, But Not Lost: Bryant’s To A Waterfowl.” 17 July, 2014. https://hokku.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/lone-wandering-but-not-lost-bryants-to-a-waterfowl/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017.

[4] Baym, Nina,   et al.  The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 (1865 to the Present), Shorter 8th  Edition.  W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.