Contemporary poetry is frequently criticized for several pervasive flaws: obscurity, banality, and nihilism, each deserving its own detailed examination. However, perhaps its most conspicuous and defining characteristic is an overwhelming solipsism. This manifests as a self-absorbed tendency for poets to elevate trivial autobiographical details to the status of poetic subject matter, often with no grander ambition than presenting their own perspective as an individual or as a representative of a particular identity group defined by factors such as race, class, or other demographic markers.
One might ask why this presents a problem. After all, isn’t all poetry, to some degree, autobiographical? Surely, a poet must draw material from their own experiences, whether lived directly or learned indirectly. Indeed, poetry is often considered the ultimate form of individual expression – thought captured for posterity through the medium of art, be it oral tradition or written text. Yet, this very nature of poetry necessitates that it must be universal if it is to succeed as a poetic work. By definition, the poem involves the poet projecting their internal thoughts and experiences beyond their personal frame of reference, enabling it to directly engage with the reader’s own knowledge and background.
Poets achieve this transcendence through the skillful deployment of poetic metaphor. This is not merely metaphor as a simple rhetorical comparison, but metaphor understood in its fundamental sense: a “transfer” of the object to its representation. A sensory object that serves as a poetic subject becomes truly poetic only when it is transformed into a representation of an eternal, unchanging, universal ideal. Because this ideal possesses eternity, immutability, and universality, it becomes readily recognizable and relatable to any reader, regardless of time or language.
“Solipsism,” as discussed here, represents a refusal to undertake this poetic leap from the temporal realm to the eternal. This reluctance likely stems from the recognition that acknowledging anything eternal and universal diminishes the self – an unbearable prospect for a narcissist. This is not to claim that all contemporary poets are clinical narcissists. However, contemporary poets, particularly in the Western world, have largely grown up immersed in a consumer culture saturated with mass advertising. This environment constantly caters to individual self-worth and self-perception as a means to sell products, undeniably contributing to a society characterized by a narcissistic perspective, if not outright narcissism.
To a certain extent, we cannot fault contemporary poets for being products of the societies that shaped their adulthood. Nevertheless, it remains the poet’s imperative to transcend these limitations of time and custom, to rise above them. Just as Dante ascended beyond the world of feudal lords and the strife of Guelphs and Ghibellines, and Goethe rose above the era of hereditary aristocracy and Napoleonic conquest, so too is it the duty of the contemporary poet to rise above our current landscape of corporate dominance, political and marketing propaganda, and aspiring global powers. Their task is to reveal truth through the specific lens of our time. Yet, contemporary poets frequently fall short in this regard. It is often far more comfortable to speak about oneself than to challenge the forces that hold sway over fame and fortune.
This essay aims to explore the manifestation of solipsism within contemporary American poetry, trace its historical roots back to figures like Walt Whitman, and propose a potential solution and a path forward to revitalize poetry, returning it to its role as authentic artistic representation rather than self-absorbed display.
I
To begin, it is helpful to illustrate precisely how this solipsism manifests itself. Contemporary American poetry is so permeated with solipsism that selecting representative examples presents a considerable challenge. While several poets immediately come to mind, the world recently witnessed a highly public exhibition of solipsistic contemporary poetry.
This particularly striking and recent instance is none other than Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb,” recited at a recent United States presidential inauguration. This poem encapsulates numerous contemporary poetic vices, including prosaic language, grammatical and syntactical errors, pervasive clichés, uneven line breaks, and a complete absence of musicality. However, setting aside purely poetic deficiencies, the poem stands as a veritable monument to solipsism. Merely eight lines into the work, the poem features this astonishing line:
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
Gorman has barely commenced her recitation, and she immediately centers herself within a poem ostensibly intended to celebrate a new government presiding over a nation of 325 million people. It also conveys a striking sense of ingratitude: her aspiration was to be president, not merely to recite for one. Furthermore, the statement lacks logical coherence: if she is describing her own contemporary moment, how can she also be its successor?
By positioning herself so centrally within the poem, Gorman relinquishes her fundamental role as a poet to cultivate a robust poetic voice. A poem’s narrative voice should simultaneously be deeply personal and broadly universal. For the ideas conveyed within a poem to possess any resonance for a different mind reading it, the poem must engage the reader with the described experience on a level that transcends mere entertainment or sensory stimulation. The poet’s experience must signify something meaningful to the reader. To achieve this effect, upon which the entire success of a poem hinges, the poet must step outside their own personal frame of reference and perceive it from the reader’s perspective.
Gorman conspicuously fails to do this. Instead, she describes herself using raw demographic terms and recounts her experience of standing on the stage, reciting at the inauguration. She makes no attempt to extract any deeper insight beyond a clichéd, motivational slogan like “anyone can dream of becoming president.” By adopting such a narrow, myopic perspective, Gorman obliterates any possibility of the poem appealing to a universal audience reflective of the entire nation. Consequently, she speaks solely on behalf of Amanda Gorman and no one else.
Amanda Gorman is not the sole navel-gazing poet to have recited at a presidential inauguration. Richard Blanco, who recited at Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, also openly highlights his identity – in his case, as a homosexual and the son of Cuban immigrants. A particularly overt example of solipsism in his work can be found in these lines from his 2012 poem, “Looking for the Gulf Motel.” The poem commences with a highly autobiographical declaration:
There should be nothing here I don’t remember . . .
The Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts and ship’s wheel in the lobby should still be rising out of the sand like a cake decoration. My brother and I should still be pretending we don’t know our parents, embarrassing us as they roll the luggage cart past the front desk loaded with our scruffy suitcases, two-dozen loaves of Cuban bread, brown bags bulging with enough mangos to last the entire week, our espresso pot, the pressure cooker- and a pork roast reeking garlic through the lobby. All because we can’t afford to eat out, not even on vacation, only two hours from our home in Miami, but far enough away to be thrilled by whiter sands on the west coast of Florida, where I should still be for the first time watching the sun set instead of rise over the ocean.
The poem subsequently repeats the italicized refrain, “There should be nothing here I don’t remember . . . ,” three additional times. Each repetition is followed by intimate, almost photographic details drawn from Blanco’s childhood, with a specific emphasis on scenes unique to his parents’ Cuban immigrant background.
At its most generous interpretation, Blanco’s poem merely hints at a universal theme: the yearning to preserve cherished childhood memories. However, he never articulates why these particular memories hold significance for him beyond the obvious fact that they shaped his formative years and, presumably, the person he became. He halts at the simple wish not to forget these memories. He declines to transform them into something with which any reader can genuinely connect. Instead, the reader is left with a mere “day in the life” spectator experience, inclined to respond with a polite, detached “That’s nice” or “That’s interesting,” remaining an outsider without being directly engaged by the sensory experience on an intellectual or emotional level.
“Looking for the Gulf Motel” is by no means an isolated incident. Blanco’s wider body of work is replete with similar examples, many of which focus intensely on details related to his identity as a Cuban-American and as a homosexual. While he demonstrates considerable skill in description and rendering detail, his poetry functions less as a work of metaphor and more as pure autobiography, offering a specific perspective rather than revealing a universal idea.
Lawrence Joseph is another poet whose work is characterized by an abundance of solipsistic detail. Like Blanco, he is the son of immigrants, though his heritage is Lebanese rather than Cuban. Joseph is also notable for being a well-known attorney in “Big Law,” famously representing Texas before the United States Supreme Court in a challenge to the 2020 election results.[1]
His poem provocatively titled “Sand Nigger,” featured in his 1988 collection Curriculum Vitae, effectively captures the solipsism frequently found in his verse:
. . . Lebanon of mountains and sea, of pine and almond trees, of cedars in the service of Solomon, Lebanon of Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Turks and Byzantines, of the one-eyed monk, saint Maron, in whose rite I am baptized; Lebanon of my mother warning my father not to let the children hear, of my brother who hears and from whose silence I know there is something I will never know; Lebanon of grandpa giving me my first coin secretly, secretly holding my face in his hands, kissing me and promising me the whole world. My father’s vocal chords bleed; he shouts too much at his brother, his partner, in the grocery store that fails. I hide money in my drawer, I have the talent to make myself heard. I am admonished to learn, never to dirty my hands with sawdust and meat. . . . “Sand nigger,” I’m called, and the name fits: I am the light-skinned nigger with black eyes and the look difficult to figure – a look of indifference, a look to kill – a Levantine nigger in the city on the strait between the great lakes Erie and St. Clair which has a reputation for violence, an enthusiastically bad-tempered sand nigger who waves his hands, nice enough to pass, Lebanese enough to be against his brother, with his brother against his cousin, with cousin and brother against the stranger.
Joseph is clearly not writing exclusively about himself. The concluding lines of the poem generalize his experience sufficiently to indicate that he is also addressing the broader Lebanese and Arab immigrant experience, offering a rather critical view of what he perceives as inherent factionalism within that community.
Nevertheless, his scope extends no further than this. He depicts the experience of a community, which, while potentially offering a new perspective to the reader, fails to engage the reader directly on a deeper level. It stops short of transforming the generalized Lebanese and Arab immigrant experience into the realm of the universal. This is a missed opportunity, as the subject matter could easily lend itself to a discussion of displacement, cultural identity, or shifting perceptions of time and place more generally. Joseph chooses not to explore these broader themes.
Like Blanco, Joseph presents his own and his family’s experiences as a “day in the life” narrative, offering little beyond this descriptive portrayal, except for a reflection on negative characteristics he observes among the Lebanese. The specific episodes he describes concerning interactions within his family, while providing glimpses of unique scenes and individuals, function primarily as anecdotes. No true metaphor is employed to elevate them into something greater than mere illustrations of what Joseph views as flaws in the Lebanese character.
Also mirroring Blanco, Joseph prominently places his identity at the core of his description: Lebanese, Catholic, son of immigrants. This overt declaration of identity is a direct manifestation of solipsism. Cultural, ethnic, and religious background serves as one – albeit superficial – means by which individuals define themselves as distinct entities. However, while Joseph (and Blanco) foreground their identities, they never succeed in directly engaging the reader with that identity. Instead, it remains in the realm of simple description – essentially, an anthropological study written in the first person.
Gorman, Blanco, and Joseph are all firmly established poets within the mainstream literary scene. Their work reflects the kind of poetry often championed by dominant cultural and educational institutions. It appears that solipsism has become the prevailing trend in contemporary poetry. To understand its current dominance, it is helpful to trace its trajectory.
II
Autobiographical poems are, of course, not a recent phenomenon. Poets did not suddenly begin writing about themselves only a generation ago. Indeed, a master of English poetry, John Milton, produced an autobiographical poem that remains one of the most celebrated works in the language: the sonnet “On His Blindness.”
When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide; And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide: Doth God exact day-labour, light denied, I fondly ask? But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.
In this sonnet, Milton discusses not only the physical reality of being afflicted with blindness but also the profound spiritual and philosophical reflections it triggers within him. It is personal in the sense that Milton describes his own perspective on his unique experience. Yet, Milton does not dwell solely on his status as a person suffering from a disability. He does not primarily ask the reader to empathize with him specifically as a blind man – as Blanco and Joseph do with their identities as sons of immigrants. Instead, he grapples with how his affliction fits into the Divine Will for his life. In wrestling with this theological question, he arrives at his famous resolution: serving God – or, more broadly, fulfilling one’s appointed role – can be accomplished just as effectively through passive acceptance and patience as through active endeavor.
Milton effectively universalizes his deeply personal experience. He employs his blindness as a subject to achieve poetic metaphor, thereby using it as a vehicle to unveil a greater, universal truth about faith, patience, and the nature of service. The sonnet is less about Milton’s physical condition itself and more about the profound realization he attains through contemplating that experience. The only element that is strictly autobiographical is the fact that Milton directs his contemplation inward, focusing on his own state, rather than outward towards an external object.
A century and a half later, the Romantic poets, with their emphasis on poetry as the expression of intense emotion, placed a heightened value on the deeply personal nature of poetic creation. Wordsworth, in his famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings . . . from emotion recollected in tranquility,” [2] captured the Romantic view of poetry as arising directly from emotion – an inherently individual experience intricately linked with the poet’s unique sensory perception. If poetry is fundamentally recollected emotion, then the poet’s primary obligation becomes the accurate conveyance of that emotion, rather than a reflection on some universal truth. Metaphor is consequently relegated to a secondary, supporting role, while descriptive power takes precedence as the main vehicle for communicating feeling.
Wordsworth’s expansive thirteen-book poem, The Prelude, presents a curious anomaly within the epic tradition. Its grand, sweeping epic form is juxtaposed against its subject matter: intimate and frequently mundane scenes from Wordsworth’s own life. The poem is, in essence, an extended autobiography, filled with reminiscences and reflections on the events and experiences of Wordsworth’s life, with a particular focus on his childhood and youth.
A characteristic example of the self-referential episodes in The Prelude is the depiction of Wordsworth’s solitary wanderings in the wilderness as an eight-year-old:
Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear; Much favored in my birthplace, and no less In that beloved Vale to which, erelong, I was transplanted. Well I call to mind (‘Twas at an early age, ere I had seen Nine summers) when upon the mountain slope The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped The last autumnal crocus, ‘twas my joy To wander half the night among the Cliffs And the smooth Hollows, where the woodcocks ran Along the open turf. In thought and wish That time, my shoulder all with springes hung, I was a fell destroyer. On the heights Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied My anxious visitation, hurrying on, Still hurrying, hurrying onward; moon and stars Were shining o’er my head; I was alone, And seemed to be a trouble to the peace That was among them. . . .
(The Prelude, I:305-24.)
Here, Wordsworth’s voice feels almost contemporary, sharing details from his boyhood that, while vividly described, seem more aimed at recounting his life’s story than at universalizing the experience through metaphor. Indeed, few readers, especially contemporary ones, can directly relate to Wordsworth’s specific experience as an eight-year-old boy alone hunting in the wilderness at night. If anything, it reads primarily as a historical curiosity.
However, Wordsworth does more than simply string together a series of autobiographical sketches. Following this descriptive passage, he shifts into a truly poetic mode:
The mind of Man is framed even like the breath And harmony of music. There is a dark Invisible workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, and makes them move In one society. Ah me! That all The terrors, all the early miseries, Regrets, vexations, lassitudes, that all The thoughts and feelings which have been infused Into my mind, should ever have made up The calm existence that is mine when I Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end! Thanks likewise for the means!
(I:351-62.)
At this point, Wordsworth finally universalizes the experience. He concludes that his youthful wanderings shaped the man he became, and in them, he perceives destiny at work, expressing gratitude for this formative process. While not a particularly groundbreaking or profound observation, it is one that Wordsworth clearly makes with heartfelt sincerity.
The Prelude generally follows this pattern: a description of a mundane experience from Wordsworth’s early life, along with the emotions he felt at the time, is succeeded by a reflection on the deeper, universalized significance of that experience. In this sense, the poem can be characterized as a “didactic autobiography.”
Despite its didactic nature, Wordsworth’s explications in The Prelude do not fully achieve true poetic metaphor. Wordsworth explicitly states his intent and meaning, rather than allowing the meaning to emerge implicitly through the transformation of the poetic object. Although he “tells” rather than “shows,” Wordsworth nevertheless succeeds in universalizing his experiences and presenting them as lessons for the reader.
The Prelude undeniably represents a significant departure from the traditional epic form. The sheer ordinariness of its episodes and the intimacy of its descriptions turn the genre’s conventions on their head. Crucially, it marks a shift away from autobiographical poetry as practiced by Milton. By making his own life the subject of a sprawling thirteen-book epic, Wordsworth effectively paved the way for poetry to potentially descend into navel-gazing. While The Prelude comes close, it doesn’t fully cross that threshold on its own; it still presents autobiographical details as illustrative of a greater lesson. Wordsworth still felt compelled to provide something of value to the reader – a lesson derived from his life experiences. He had not yet taken the step of making autobiography both the subject and the ultimate purpose of his poetry.
III
The Prelude was indeed just a prelude. Across the Atlantic, the burgeoning romantic trends in poetry would blossom into full-fledged solipsism in the works of Walt Whitman.
Whitman’s influence on American poetry was nothing short of revolutionary. Prior to his emergence, American poets like Edgar Allan Poe and William Cullen Bryant largely adhered to classical styles inherited from Europe. Whitman, however, gifted the young nation a completely new mode of expression: discursive, conversational, free from strict form, and profoundly intimate. More than any other figure, Whitman laid the groundwork for contemporary free verse. Ezra Pound himself acknowledged this debt in his poem “A Pact”:
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman – I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root – Let there be commerce between us.
Pound’s declaration that he and Whitman shared “one sap and one root,” and his comparison of himself to a “grown child” returning to Whitman as his father, constitutes as clear an acknowledgment of influence as a poet can offer. Given Pound’s immense impact on the modernist movement in poetry, his statement positions Whitman as nothing less than the forefather of poetic modernism.
However, Whitman is the progenitor of more than just the modernist style and aesthetic; he is arguably the first, and perhaps the greatest, solipsistic poet. One of Whitman’s most famous works, the sprawling, 1,346-line “Song of Myself,” stands as a masterpiece of solipsism.
The poem opens with an unambiguous statement of intent:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. (ll. 1-13.)
Whitman could not be more explicit. He does not pursue Wordsworth’s didactic application of autobiography. Instead, his stated aim is simply to “celebrate myself.” His declaration to the reader, “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” is not so much a statement of shared humanity as it is an invitation for the reader to step into Whitman’s personal frame of reference and perceive the world exactly as he perceives it. Later, he reiterates this point:
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. (ll. 35-37.)
Whitman embodies a form of democratic solipsism. He desires that the reader celebrate the self with the same fervor he does, to view the world through a self-centric lens just as he does. What might otherwise be perceived as insufferable narcissism becomes, in Whitman’s hands, an enticement: the poem doesn’t demand that the reader merely tolerate Whitman’s navel-gazing but rather invites them to participate in it, to find their own experiences reflected in the mirror of those Whitman describes from his own life.
Consequently, the vast majority of the poem is a detailed exposition of autobiographical minutiae rendered with vivid descriptive power. Whitman barrages the reader with scenes he witnessed while traveling across America in the 1850s – descriptions of people, places, and events; portrayals of everyday life filtered intensely through his unique perspective.
The intimacy of Whitman’s detail extends to another dimension as well. Well ahead of his time, Whitman includes candid descriptions of sexual experiences throughout the poem, frank enough to prompt the district attorney of Boston to threaten prosecution under Massachusetts’s obscenity laws against Whitman’s publisher.[3]
Interspersed among the scenic portrayals, Whitman injects his own thoughts and insights. Unlike Wordsworth, these insights are not didactic; they are profoundly self-reflective. Some, in fact, transcend mere self-reflection and border on the megalomaniacal. In the following two passages, Whitman proclaims a sort of divinity for himself:
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from, The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it, . . . (ll. 524-27.)
Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious? Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.) I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. (ll. 398-418.)
In a flourish no less grandiose, he offers his self-assessment of his own role as a poet:
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride, We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is only development. Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. (ll. 422-34.)
Or, even more famously:
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
(ll. 1324-26.)
And perhaps most solipsistic of all, Whitman declares himself the absolute pinnacle of all creation leading up to his existence:
I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugg’d close—long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. (ll. 1148-69.)
The stars, prehistoric dinosaurs, the entirety of human history – all, in Whitman’s view, served as one vast preface, meticulously preparing the universe solely for the advent of Walt Whitman himself.
However, Whitman does not make these extraordinary assertions from a position of aloof superiority. Indeed, when considered within the broader context of the poem, particularly alongside its intimate descriptions of everyday experiences, the reader is left with the distinct impression that Whitman implies what he proclaims about himself holds equally true for anyone else. It is this form of equal-opportunity solipsism, this invitation to share in the celebration and admiration of the self, that makes Whitman’s work captivating rather than merely insufferable.
Towards the conclusion of the poem, Whitman contemplates his own mortality and what awaits him after death:
The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.
(ll. 1334-46.)
He clearly expresses a lack of belief in the immortality of the soul. In a twist of irony, Whitman, the living divinity for whom all of geologic time was supposedly mere preparation, paradoxically “bequeath[s]” himself “to the dirt,” to be found only “under your boot-soles.” For Whitman, divinity resides within living existence, and that divine state ceases upon death.
Yet, even after contemplating his own perceived annihilation, Whitman’s self survives and remains the central focus of the poem. In its final line, “I stop somewhere waiting for you,” Whitman endures as an idea, if not a physical entity, patiently awaiting discovery by the reader, promising to be “good health” to them. Even after what he views as his own physical dissolution, Whitman never relinquishes his position as the poem’s central figure and primary subject.
“Song of Myself” stands as the ultimate manifesto of solipsism. It offers no didactic lesson and explores no universal truth beyond the emphatic celebration of the self as the absolute center and pinnacle of all existence. Whitman presents his own perception of himself as the model for how everyone should view their own selves: the sole valid frame of reference, unbound by and superior to all creeds, philosophies, and societal or cultural norms.
And Whitman’s vision largely triumphed. By and large, society, particularly in America, has adopted his perspective of the self as the supreme arbiter of truth, the only valid frame of reference by which to interpret the external world. Even among those who profess religious faith or adhere to a specific philosophy, they frequently justify their beliefs or acceptance in terms of the self, their personal experiences, and their individual frame of reference. Solipsism lies at the very heart of contemporary American thought. Whitman merely served as its most eloquent and profuse prophet.
It is therefore unsurprising that poets within such a solipsistic culture tend to produce solipsistic verse. They write from what they intimately know and experience in their own lives. But what, ultimately, does the solipsistic mindset achieve through poetry once all is written and published?
IV
Solipsism may well be the prevailing mindset of our age, but much like the consumer products marketed through appeals to selfish desires, it can never truly satisfy the profound human yearning for meaning that poetry is uniquely capable of addressing. All it can offer are superficial thrills. It is fundamentally shallow; it portrays an experience in which the reader might – or might not – glimpse a reflection of their own life, but it consistently fails to transform that individual experience into a depersonalized revelation of a universal truth. Without this crucial transformative leap, poetry degrades into mere autobiography, an anthropological curiosity confined within specific boundaries of time and space, rather than a universal ideal that transcends them.
Where does this state of affairs leave poetry? Is Whitman’s legacy an inescapable fate? While Whitman is undeniably a patriarch of modernism and solipsism in American poetry, he is far from the only model available to contemporary poets. Indeed, a slightly older contemporary and fellow countryman offers today’s poets a compelling alternative path. That poet is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
At Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, location of his grave.
Renowned for his epic poems The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline, as well as his Chaucer-inspired Tales of a Wayside Inn, Longfellow also composed scores of shorter poems, very few of which are overtly autobiographical. When he does delve into autobiographical territory, however, Longfellow adheres to the model established by Milton, effectively universalizing his personal experience.
“My Lost Youth,” an early poem published in his 1847 collection, Birds of Passage, perhaps serves as the best illustration of this approach. In structure and subject matter, it is notably similar to Blanco’s “Looking for the Gulf Motel” or Joseph’s “Sand Nigger” – a description of childhood experiences revisited and reflected upon by the adult poet. Unlike those poems, however, Longfellow does not merely recount the thoughts and emotions evoked by revisiting his childhood home and the places he frequented as a boy; he employs them as a vehicle to reveal a greater, universal truth about human experience.
The poem begins by describing his return to his native town in Maine:
Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: “A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
The Lapland song quoted at the conclusion of the stanza is repeated as a refrain at the end of each of the poem’s ten stanzas. Attributing these thoughts to a distant people who sang them in a foreign tongue subtly underscores the universality of the ideas being expressed. The realization that the thoughts and experiences of childhood profoundly shape the adult is not presented as Longfellow’s unique personal insight, but rather as a fundamental human condition that transcends any specific individual or society.
He proceeds to describe scenes from the town and its surrounding landscape, and the thoughts and emotions they stir within him. He makes perhaps his most poignant and powerful observations in the seventh and eighth stanzas:
I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the schoolboy’s brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. . . . There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. . . .
Here, Longfellow describes an experience that is simultaneously his own and yet not exclusively his – an experience readily recognizable to any reader who has lived long enough to realize their youth has passed. Although he mourns his departed youth, he simultaneously acknowledges that many of its fleeting experiences and thoughts have lingered, profoundly influencing the adult he would eventually become. Unlike Wordsworth, Longfellow does not convey this lesson didactically or explicitly. Instead, he describes the general effect and impression of his childhood thoughts and experiences without delving into the intimate, specific details that both Blanco and Joseph use to illustrate their personal histories. This approach, which is both specific in its setting and generalized in its description of internal states, universalizes the experience, leading the reader to a realization of a universal truth they recognize within themselves, rather than presenting a mere autobiography that accomplishes little beyond recounting a personal story.
While Longfellow addresses the same fundamental subject matter as Blanco and Joseph, and indeed as Whitman and Wordsworth, he describes and utilizes it in a fundamentally different manner. Both the experiences of childhood and the lasting impressions they leave on the adult are employed metaphorically, serving to reveal a truth about the human condition as it is affected by the relentless passage of time. This is the only genuine sense in which a reader should care about a poet’s childhood experiences – by viewing through them the universal truths they illuminate.
Autobiography unquestionably has a legitimate place within poetry. In fact, a degree of autobiography is arguably an unavoidable element in any poetic expression. However, autobiography pursued solely for its own sake is not poetic; it is mere navel-gazing. Even when employed ostensibly to illustrate the perceived experiences of a larger community, it ultimately does nothing more than loudly proclaim to the reader, “Look at me!” Instead, autobiography should function as a device, serving the higher poetic aim: the revelation of universal truth through the transformative power of metaphor. Milton and Longfellow demonstrate how this can be achieved successfully. True poetry will emulate their approach and their timeless revelations, rather than succumbing to the solipsism exemplified by Whitman and his successors in the present day.
Notes
- Domestico, Anthony. “So Many Selves: A Poet of Unlikely Combinations.” Commonweal. Mar. 17, 2020. Available at https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/compound-voices.
- From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802).
- Folsom, Ed, and Jerome Loving. Notes to “The Walt Whitman Controversy” by Mark Twain. Virginia Quarterly Review. Spring 2007. Available at, https://www.vqronline.org/vqr-symposium/walt-whitman-controversy.