Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IMITATIONS OF WALT WHITMAN, by ANONYMOUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IMITATIONS OF WALT WHITMAN, by                    
First Line: Who am I?
Subject(s): "imitation;poetry & Poets;singing & Singers;whitman, Walt (1819-1891);


WHO am I?
I have been reading Walt Whitman, and know not whether he be me, or me he; --
Or otherwise!
Oh, blue skies! oh, rugged mountains! oh, mighty, rolling Niagara!
O, chaos and everlasting bosh!
I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a fool, an
idiot!
Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps,
and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close.
We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine canons of the future!
We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff, jeer, and
babble -- die!
Serve them right.
What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the glory of
Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman?
Start not! 'Tis no end of a minstrel show who perpends this query;
'Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family Herald,
No charade, acrostic (double or single), conundrum, riddle. rebus, anagram, or
other guess-work.
I answer thus: We both write truths -- great, stern, solemn, unquenchable truths
-- couched in more or less ridiculous language.

I, as a rule use rhyme, he does not; therefore, I am his Superior (which is also
a lake in his great and glorious country).
I scorn, with the unutterable scorn of the despiser of pettiness, to take a mean
advantage of him.
He writes, he sells, he is read (more or less); why then should I rack my brains
and my rhyming dictionary? I will see the public hanged first!
I sing of America, of the United States, of the stars and stripes of Oskhosh, of
Kalamazoo, and of Salt Lake City.
I sing of the railroad cars, of the hotels, of the breakfasts, the lunches, the
dinners, and the suppers;
Of the soup, the fish, the entrees, the joints, the game, the puddings and the
ice-cream.
I sing all -- I eat all -- I sing in turn of Dr. Bluffem's Antibilious Pills.
No subject is too small, too insignificant, for Nature's poet.
I sing of the cocktail, a new song for every cocktail, hundreds of songs,
hundreds of cocktails.
It is a great and a glorious land! The Mississippi, the Missouri, and a million
other torrents roll their waters to the ocean.
It is a great and glorious land! The Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Rockies
(see atlas for other mountain ranges too numerous to mention) piece the clouds!
And the greatest and most glorious product of this great and glorious land is
Walt Whitman;
This must be so, for he says it himself.
There is but one greater than he between the rising and the setting sun.
There is but one before whom he meekly bows his humbled head.
Oh, great and glorious land, teeming producer of all things, creator of Niagara,
and inventor of Walt Whitman,
Erase your national advertisements of liver pads and cures for rheumatism from
your public monuments, and inscribe thereon in letters of gold the name
Judy.





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