Walt Whitman - Blog Entry Part 1

Rich Hoggan
English 48B
Walt Whitman Blog Entry - Part 1

As I began reading the introduction for Walt Whitman it hit me. Most of these great literary authors came up in some form of journalistic position. For example Whitman began working at a newspaper when he was only 12 years old. Obviously, there is a huge age difference back then as opposed to now, but it was at this early age that Whitman was exposed to the wonderful world of writing. This can be seen when the editors state "By the age of twelve he was employed in the printing office of a newspaper, reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott and contributing short items…In his midteens he contributed pieces to one of the best Manhattan papers, the Mirror…" (17). This passage is just a small portion of Whitman's life in the typesetting and publishing world, for his youth is littered with instances of Whitman working for some newspaper.

What's interesting about this is the fact that, if you were interested in it, you could pursue it -- leaving out the obvious implications of prejudice at the time. It's hard to say if Whitman just needed to find work or if he really wanted to work as a typesetter. Either way you look at it, Whitman had the chance to experience the writing world from a perspective many of us can't. It's obvious that we don't all work for the local newspaper, but we have been given the same ability to enter into the publishing/journalistic world by way of the "blog." Blogging for my generation would have been like working for the newspaper in Whitman's -- the sheer ability to write and be exposed to writing set me in the direction of having articles published in a magazine.

Taken from his wikipedia page we read, "Whitman paid for the first publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs. (Wikipedia - Walt Whitman). This is another prime example at the differences between the time when Whitman was writing to the time when say any of us would attempt to publish something. We wouldn't necessarily have to pay any money out of our pockets to have something published. Even if we did have to pay for publishing, the cost of publishing has decreased so much that it's now possible to publish anything you write in book form.

But what can be taken away from both of these passages? For the most part, I think it's important for us to realize that there has been a major shift in writing as well as publishing. So much so that Whitman himself would write much like he did in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" about the new ways in which we reach the world through writing. The tough decision to be made here is whether or not the way we write and promote or prose to the world has diminished the value of writing or has blustered it? When we look at Twitter it's hard to find much in the way of "information to live by" as we mainly read about what toast people made. But if we were to take this idea of Twitter and place it in the context of rebellion, well then we have created a tool of speaking out against repression.

The same can be said of blogging. Has it changed out understanding of the news or how we get our news? I think blogging has added a new element to how we receive information in our daily lives, but blogging has done more, it's made us all into "Walt Whitmans." I say this because there is no longer a need to hand write everything, even though hand writing poetry seems to slow down the writing process that we can better think of the words we are using. To sum up, I think we can look to Whitman's early career as a publisher and journalist and be able to transplant it to our own writing in a way that allows us the same ability to reach the world. Whether we are hand writing everything or typing it out in a blog, writing is the vehicle with which our emotions and feelings can be expressed.