Walt Whitman has long been regarded as the quintessential American
bard, the poet who best represents all that is distinctive about
life in the United States. Whitman himself encouraged this view,
but he was also quick to remind his readers that he was an unlikely
candidate for the office of national poet, and that his
working-class upbringing and radical take on human sexuality often
put him at odds with American culture. While American literary
history has tended to credit Whitman with having invented the
persona of the national outsider as the national bard, Edward
Whitley recovers three of Whitman's contemporaries who adopted
similar personae: James M. Whitfield, an African American
separatist and abolitionist; Eliza R. Snow, a Mormon pioneer and
women's leader; and John Rollin Ridge, a Cherokee journalist and
Native-rights advocate.
These three poets not only provide a counterpoint to the Whitmanian
persona of the outsider bard, but they also reframe the criteria by
which generations of scholars have characterized Whitman as
America's poet. This effort to resituate Whitman's place in
American literary history provides an innovative perspective on the
most familiar poet of the United States and the culture from which
he emerged.