Letters & Leaves - McGrath's Indian Culture vs. Whitman's Poetic Tradition - 1985

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North Dakota Quarterly

Volume 53, Number 1 Winter 1985

Contents

Jay Meek

Thomas Matchie

The Librettist (poem)

5 Letter and Leaves: McGrath's Indian

Culture vs. Whitman's Poetic

Tradition

Thomas McGrath 26 Seven Poems

James H. Rogers 29 Vision and Feeling: An Interview

with Thomas McGrath

Harvey Lillywhite 45 Five Poems

Peter Wild 49 Rescuing James Ohio Pattie,

Litterateur

Ken McCullough 60 Two Poems

Mary Tookey 62 Christians, Pagans, and Patriarchs:

Malamud's System of Symbols

Dan Campion 81 Handful of Stars (poem)

Marcia Tager 82 Adoration (story)

Hillel Schwartz 87 Fair (poem)

Bill Christophersen 89 Between Two Houses: Architecture

as Metaphor in The Professor's

House

R Bartkowech 97 Two Poems

Malcolm South 102 The Lion as a Guardian Symbol and

Figure

Norbert Krapf 112 A Swabian Scene (poem)

John D. Nesbitt 114 Cain Hammet's Bighorn Sheep and

Lije Evans' Dog

Hugh Ogden 120 I Remember Thinking They Would

Save Him (poem)



Roger Handberg 121 Know Thy Enemy: Changing Images

of the Enemy in Popular Literature

P. H. Liotta 128 Two Poems

Sea Changes: Books That Mattered

Elinor Grumet 130 On Reinventing Womanhood

Reviews

Michael Anderegg 133 Four Books on British Cinema

Michael Beard 137 Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud

Joan Eades 142 Nadine Gordimer, Something Out

There

Michael Jaksa 144 Hiram Drache, Koochiching

Mark Phillips 148 Richard Dokey, Sundown, and Jack

L. Stoll, Rex, A Fictional Satire and

Comments on the American Way of

Sex

Robert Seabloom 150 The World After Nuclear War: A

Review of a Conference on Long-

Term Biological Consequences of

Nuclear Conflict

Max Westbrook 152 Jackson J. Benson, The True Adven··

tures of John Steinbeck, Writer

Robert W. Lewis 154 Timothy Young, "Men Don't Dance

in America"

A. William Johnson 156 Theses and Dissertations Accepted by

the Graduate School of the Univer-

sity of North Dakota - 1984

Editor's Notes 169

Contributors 172



Letter and Leaves:

McGrath's Indian Culture vs.

Whitman's Poetic Tradition

THOMAS MATCH IE

At least one critic has described Parts I and II of Tom McGrath's

Letter to an Imaginary Friend as "the best long poem in America since

Leaves oj Grass." I After the appearance of the "Christmas Section"

of Part III in the early 1980s, Diane Wakoski said it is definitely in

the tradition of Whitman and' 'could become the greatest poem out

of the heart of the American midwest."? Because that tradition is so

important I want to discuss ways in which McGrath looks back to his

New York predecessor for his own development; I also want to focus \

on the history, though-particularly the Indian history-that separates

these two, and upon which McGrath depends so heavily for his theme

and structure. McGrath is a student not only of poetic history, in which

Whitman is a pioneer, but also, like Whitman, of social and political

development in America. McGrath, however, beginning his long poem

in 1955, wrote exactly one hundred years after the publication of the

first edition of Leaves oj Grass and centers on events, particularly the

settlement of the West and the Indians' demise, that are too late or

too far removed from Whitman's experience. Hence the interests that

link him to Whitman in an ironic way make him significantly different.

First, then, a look at some of the factors that tie these two poems

together. Like "Song of Myself," McGrath's poem is pseudo-

autobiographical. Whitman's poem went through ten editions between

1855 and his death in 1891. He includes such things as his boyhood

on Long Island, details of his days as a newspaper reporter in Manhat-

tan, and experiences during the Civil War; McGrath begins Part I of

his Letter as a boy on a farm in North Dakota, moves through collegelife in Grand Forks and Louisiana in the 1930s, recounts violent episodes

from his military duty during World War II, and ends in the mid 1950s

as a writer in Los Angeles. As with Whitman, McGrath's poem is in-

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complete; he once said the one thing he wanted to do was keep work-

ing on Letter,' and it now appears that Parts III and IV are ready for

publication. At any rate-though one starts in New York, the other

in North Dakota-both poets write from their experiences, which they

then use to comment on events of their respective centuries in a larger-

than-personal sense; they really interpret through their own lives the

changing consciousness of a country.

That interpretation comes through their commentaries on rural as

well as urban settings. Both, for instance, describe their boyhood selves

as a part of the land. In "There Was a Child Went Forth" the lilacs

and farmyard on Long Island become an intimate source of Whitman's

psychic life, and in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" the sea and

the bird contribute thematically to his own becoming a poet through

the conscious acceptance of death. Brooks sees this kind of acceptance

as an important lesson for a nation obsessed (in the mid 19th century)with material progress." So in McGrath's Letter some of the richest

poetry is in the poet's description of his young growing self in connec-

tion with the farmland of North Dakota. And though he sees much

wrong with his own state, he finds the prairie and coulees renewing

and refreshing, for himself and all America. 5 Smeall adds that McGrath

moves from autobiographic idyllic remembrances of the prairie-' 'the

Indian dead," for instance-to a universal dream of a better society,

and in the process changes the structure of our feelings. 6

Regarding the city, both had that realistic eye of the reporter, and

though Whitman romanticizes the urban landscape in "Crossing

Brooklyn Ferry," his graphic details of city life- "the suicide sprawls

on the bloody floor of the bedroom" (Sec. Sr-are reflected in

McGrath's observations of similar scenes as a writer in Los Angeles:

Thump.

And out of that colorless heaven

Some poor mad whore falls a whirling praying

Ten stories.

Thump.

To give us our Daily News:

(pp. 153-154)'

The rhythm in both poems mirrors the fast pace of the city, though

McGrath's is more erratic and his texture more complex-here the iam-

bic hexameter catches the "thump" of both the dead body and the print-

ing press on which the story is recalled. As with Whitman, however,

his life experiences help interpret the social problems of an industrial

age.

A second and deeper way in which McGrath and Whitman are alike

is that both are healers-medicine men, if you will-who look at

6



themselves as spiritual envoys to the same Union whose history they

mirror in their own lives. In his study of Whitman, Cleanth Brooks

points out that this poet uses all the marks of such a primitive doctor.

The poem begins in a trance-"I mind how once ... you / ... gently

turned over upon me, / ... and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript

heart, ... / And I know / ... all the men ever born are also my

brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers" (Sec. 5)-wherein he

becomes aware of his role as a shaman: to rise above the present cor-

rupted condition of man and undertake mystical journeys in order to

heal the wounds that separate people from each other. 9 In this context,

where "a kelson of the creation is love," he fulfills the primitive pat-

terns of such specialists in ecstasy, including an appeal to and dialogue

with animal spirits-" Ya-honk" (Sec. 14), the wild gander says-and

where music and dance-"my cornets and my drums" (Sec. lS)-help

prepare the soul for its mystic journey. {O Thus in his own consciousness

this poet becomes not just a verse-maker, but what Emerson calls "a

liberating god." And when he says, "I will plant companionship thick

as trees along all the rivers of America" (Whitman, p. 117), he speaks

as the nation's shaman.

McGrath's poetry also involves a "medicine bundle." His epiphany,

however, comes not through a sexual relationship though, as with Whit-

man, sex is important to his vision, but in the context of work. During

a fight on a threshing rig, where his uncle swears at his friend Cal-a

leader in getting the men to strike-the boy discovers something pro-

found about the meaning of labor: "I remember that ugly sound, like

some animal cry touching mel Deep and cold, and I ran toward them/

And the fighting started" (p. IS). Stern says this is the beginning of

McGrath's political-economic view of America, it one through whichhe becomes very critical of the industrial-scientific progress that Whit-

man tolerated and at times praised. In this context the references to

animals and elements of music make sense, helping to define the poet's

mission. The "secret language" of "ducks," for instance, unveils his

animated view of the universe as he begins his mystic' 'journeys," ac-

companied by "the singing services/ And ceremony cheerful as a harness

bell" (p. 2). So, too, the crickets, frogs, and a hawk help the poet sing-

in this case the "formal calls of a round-dance" (p. 22), including the

Indian kachina so basic to this poet's music. Like Whitman, then,

McGrath is aware of his role as a shaman whose poem wiII be a unify-

ing device for the society he criticizes.

A third similarity in the two long poems is that the poets want

something new for America. Whitman's life, of course, parallels theindustrial revolution and settlement of the whole continent. As a

Romantic he celebrates America's geographic and social growth ("The

7



latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new"-

Sec. 4), calling for a democracy where city and country, North and

South, male and female, upper class and lower--indeed, President and

prostitute (Sec. IS)-will be truly one. Brooks calls Whitman a true

democrat, a freethinker ("I believe in the flesh and the appetities,1 See-

ing, hearing, feeling, are miracles ... "-Sec. 24). The poet also has

a mystic devotion to freedom, equality, and fraternity-including free-

ing of the slaves, championing of women's rights, and respect for the

old, the "ineffable grace of dying days"-Sec. 4S). He looked at his

poetry as a major resource for "redeeming" this nation, something

ref1ected not only in his themes, but in his "free verse" -his departure

from rhyme and set stanzas, as well as his rhythmic freedom and the

flexibility of his lines and verse paragraphs. 12

McGrath is also interested in the group, or solidarity. His idea of

community (or commune), however, is rooted in work, which he sees

as the antithesis of industrial wealth. "Love and hunger," he says, "that

is my whole story" (p. 31). Holscher outlines McGrath's own work

experiences as they are related to brotherhood and then expressed in

a language of "radical consciousness." 13 McGrath is often seen as a

Marxist poet, but as Engel so clearly details, McGrath is a humanist

rather than an ideologue, a man with a spiritual hunger for sharing

community that grows out of his experiences, not out of the abstrac-

tions of social philosophy. I. In Letter he says:

It was good singing, that silence. From the riches of common work

The solidarity of forlorn men

Firm on our margin of poverty and cold:

Communitas ...

(p. 46)

It is interesting that the devotion to mystic freedom in Whitman also

comes through McGrath. At the end of Part I he blesses love and sex-

"by cock and by cunt" as well as "thy woman's warmth in this human

winter" (pp. 97-98)-friends, children, the universe, everything that

gives meaning to life and makes it pleasurable. Duss says that life for

McGrath is "a warm primal intoxication ... full of mystery, delight,

and beauty" and includes a "passionate demand for justice and a burn-

ing contempt for all that exploits and contaminates the good basic stuff

of life." 15 And, as with Whitman, though in a different way, his form

is free and flexible as he speaks his successive perceptions, moods, ref1ec-

tions, and aspirations.

The fact that both McGrath and Whitman, therefore, write out of

their own experiences as healers and visionaries, and that they do this

in dramatically new open forms, puts them into a common American

8



poetic tradition. But to be more specific, history separates them

thematically and technically. Whitman, of course, was aware of

America's social problems. In "The Sleepers" he speaks of the fugitive,

the poor, the felon, the idiot, the slave, the ungrown son, the rheumatic.

But he does this in the same breath he celebrates the scholar, the lover,

the dancer, the red squaw. For him "the universe is duly in order. ...

everything is in its place" (p. 432). In "Democratic Vistas" he says the

... policies of the United States, have ... with all their faults,

already substantially establish'd, for good, on their own native,

sound, long-vista'd principles, never to be overturn'd, offering a

sure basis for all the rest [emphasis mine]."

Partington claims that Whitman, aware and critical of the problems

of the Gilded Age, was essentially a prophet who championed the future

of America. J7 A reformer in the tradition of Paine and Emerson, he

thought the basic "stuff" of America was sound, that it only had to

be renewed.

It is in this context that Whitman "hear[s] America singing" (p.

12), including the mechanic, the carpenter, the mason-the builders

of industry. Mystic though he is, "Hurrah for positive science" (p. 51)

becomes his cry. It is also in this context that he idealizes not just

nature-which for him is always a purifying element-but the city in

one of his most beautiful poems, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Wendell

says that Whitman came to maturity within the scent of the East River.

Separating New York from Brooklyn, he says this was "at that time

the spot of spots where life seemed most material, most grindingly dis-

tant from ideal beauty." Yet this is the spot he uses to show that "the

glories and beauties of the universe are really perceptible everywhere."18

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-

hemm'd Manhattan?

River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood tide?

(Sec. 8)

What this means is that Whitman may overlook a certain aspect of reali-

ty, and through his role as a poet add enhancing brightness. In

"Democratic Vistas" he actually calls for such poets-poets, if need

be, with "the religious fire and abandon of Isaiah." 19

It may be that Tom McGrath is one of the very poets that Whit-

man called for to save America (he certainly has something of Isaiah

in his blood), except that this poet is not so sure that America has not

been "overturned," its basic principles thwarted. And his evidence is

historical-an event, the Westward Movement and consequent demise

of the Plains Indians, trends which intersect near the end of Whitman's

life, and might be symbolized in the Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) .

9



This event radically affected McGrath's faith in this country as an in-

herent power for good, and his tone is changed from Whitman's to

one of frustration with the American Dream. Whitman may celebrate

both the Union and Confederate forces, in fact, even "overcome

heroes" (Sec. 18) like Crazy Horse. But McGrath adopts Crazy Horse's

anger and resistance to the corruptive elements in America's westward

"progress." This does not mean that McGrath rejected the possibility

of renewal, even redemption in America, but the model he turns to is

not the ideals of the Enlightenment but again Native America, this time

the Hopi Indians. We do not know what Whitman would have thought

of McGrath, but he is his poetic successor nonetheless. In this context

his idea of wounded America, his special kind of resistance, and the

Hopi music which he sees as part of the nation's survival are worth

investigation.

Indigenous to McGrath's Letter is the concept of "wound," whichhe seems to equate with a fundamental betrayal of values in America.

In beginning Part I McGrath makes a journey-he is writing from Los

Angeles in 1955--to North Dakota, which then becomes the locus of

his poem: Dakota, he says, is everywhere, "a condition" (p. 103), and

it is a place which this author uses for the first time to "see things"

he had never seen before." If Whitman idealizes the city in spite of

its limitations or failures, as he does with America at large, McGrath

begins his examination of corruption with the Midwestern prairie,

which-with its revolutionary past-he says may be a kind of gift to

the city; indeed, it was on that prairie that this all-important wound

took place, a wound the city tries to cover over.' i Many times in Letter

he speaks of his journey "toward" or "around" that wound, which

in turn he describes as "endless" and "enduring" (pp. 1, 87). Whatthis wound involves is hinted at early in Part I when the boy poet walks

by "Indian graves" and "boneyards" (pp. 9, 44), and as he explains

events by analogy to Indians-"Confederations of Sioux," for instance,

or "Custer's massacre" (pp. 7, 9).

At this point it's important to note that McGrath is not an either/or

poet, as though he chooses the country over the city. As with Whit-

man, both are important, though at different times and in different

ways. It is simply that, as a shaman, he takes on various postures to

suit his purposes. In his review of Eliade's Shamanism, Hughes shows

that these shamanizings are sometimes" full of buffoonery, mimicry,

dialogue and magical contortion."" In McGrath's case, his visionary

experience is similar to the shaman's trance; it is a posture from which

he can see the world from Crazy Horse's viewpoint, one that is a caustic

and relentless critique of what this warrior sees as the White Man's

blindness to the Indian's plight. To become a shaman is not to detract

10



from the complexity of a situation, but merely to illuminate it in a par-

ticular way and at a particular time. Whitman, of course, was aware

of failings in America, but he did not choose to treat these in a negative

way through his poetry. McGrath, on the other hand, dramatizes the

notion of the wound in order to set in perspective his own under-

standing of America and its special need for redemption.

In Part II, McGrath reaches back into the past (the 19th century)

and becomes explicit about the origin of that wound in relation to the

Indian. He speaks of his father as a boy at Fort Ransom, swapping

ponies with the Indians in the spring and fall. But then, amidst the last

of the fighting, he remembers "Wounded Knee" and "All is finished."

About three hundred Indians were killed during this episode, and it

ended several decades of warfare on the Dakota plains. McGrath

philosophizes, making Wounded Knee "the wound";

From Indians we learned a toughness and a strength; and we gained

A freedom: by taking theirs: but a real freedom: born

From the wild and open land our grandfathers heroically stole.

But we took a wound at Indians hands: a part of our soul scabbed

over ...

(p. 190)

The language here is political and caustic. Not the best poetry, it is still

a deeply felt reaction to the white man's treatment of Native Americans.

Curiously, the idea of wound is turned around so that it is the wounder

who is wounded. In an article on Letter McGrath says the East "paved

over" America's wounds; in the West it is the duty of art to "keep

them open." 23 McGrath is different from Whitman here, for he is more

direct about the causes of evil; as a shaman he sees these wounds asa key to our identity, and not to be hastily forgotten, even in the name

of unity. This is not to oversimplify history, as though the Indians had

no responsibility in the matter, but again as shaman to demonstrate

a significant viewpoint of an event-that one man's freedom is born

of another man's loss.

If McGrath's father is a key to history, so is his "dancing grand-

father" (p. 11), who must have shared a deeper knowledge of the In-

dian world with the boy. In a poem "Buffalo Coat," McGrath describes

that grandfather's coat, which ironically keeps him warm, but also em-

bodies the "lost heat" of Indian ways. 24 In Letter some of McGrath's

best lines are reflections upon that loss-a loss that reverses the mean-

ing of the progress envisioned by Whitman.

The tracks of a million buffalo are lost in the night of a past

Lit only by the flare of a covered wagon

a harp of flesh

11



Is silenced

the book of feathers and moonlight is closed

, forever

On exhausted roads spun out of acetylene lamps of the dead

Overlands

the transcontinental locomotive is anchored in concrete

Next to the war memorial

under the emblems of progress

A vision of April light is darkened by absent eagles, ..

(p. 206)

Here McGrath mourns the Indian past and "the future that never ai

rived" (p. 206). This is the wound that as a poet he carries out fror

Dakota to 20th century America at large, and he forcefully roots it

cause in the industrial revolution.

The growing America Whitman celebrated, therefore, has fo

McGrath backfired in the prairies of the Midwest. Nor did the "prog

ress" stop with the Indians:

And the people?

"First they broke land that should not ha' been broke

and they died

Broke, Most of 'em. And after the tractor ate the horse-

It ate them. Most of 'em. And now, a few lean years,

And the banks will have it again. Most of it ... " (p. 197)

McGrath refers here to the farm foreclosures of the early 20th century;

for him the capitalistic forces that exterminated the Indian did the same

to the farmer. Wakoski says McGrath's radical spirit is akin to that

of the early Non-Partisan League whose members fought the interests

of big business, bankers, and politicians on the plains of North Dakota"and actually governed the state from 1916 into the 1920s, establishing

the nation's only state bank and state grain mill. It is a unique part

of North Dakota's history and an example of how the effects of the

wound-for McGrath a kind of original sin-can be fought politically

and economically as well as poetically. Indeed, he inspires that kind

of action with his poetry.

Because Whitman has faith in democracy and McGrath challenges

its development historically, the predominant tones of the two poems

differ. In "Song of Myself" Whitman celebrates all "Space and Time!"

(Sec. 33), combining practical American realism with Oriental

mysticism." Though he recognizes darkness as well as light, pain in-

side of joy, depths alongside heights of emotion in the movement of

the individual psyche, generally his tone is one of exuberance as he strug-

gles to transcend the human condition, hoping the nation as a whole

might experience a new solidarity. "Afoot" with his vision, Whitman

12



is equally optimistic about the Eastern city's houses as he is Western

"log huts, camping with lumbermen," about "Weeding my onion-patch" as "Prospecting, gold-digging" out West (Sec. 33). This is not

to say his attitude remains unchanged. After the Civil War, and upset

with the greed and economic corruption that followed it, he indicts

America in his essay "Democratic Vistas" (1871), saying our "underly-

ing principles are not honestly believed in ... ," that "We live in an

atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. "27 But this attitude is true only

in his prose, and as Shapiro observes, poetically Whitman still "per-

sists in his faith that the principle of democracy will overrule the cor-

rupt." 28

This principle is precisely what McGrath thinks has failed. By con-

trast to Whitman, McGrath as shaman built into his poetry a thematic-

tonal resistance to the corrupting cultural forces he saw taking over

America. And his symbol for this almost stubborn posture is CrazyHorse, the Sioux warrior who, unlike his contemporary Red Cloud,

opposed treaties and compromise of any kind with the White settlers,

miners, and soldiers who usurped the Great Plains in the last half of

the 19th century. Perhaps no author has better recreated the psychic-

historical growth of that attitude than has Mari Sandoz in her novel

Crazy Horse (1942).29This same kind of spirit comes through McGrath's

Letter, as when he calls for a poetic "Revolution":

Myself there to make a winter count and to mine my bread.

And others like me:

mavericks in lonesome canyons, singing

Into the desert ...

Bone-laced shining silence faced us ...

=-But sang there!

"Making a little coffee against the cold"-

(Alvaro showed me.)

Inventing again the commune and round

Song gathering the Crazy Horse Resistance ... (p. 117).

Indeed, for McGrath, poetry is political, "a weapon." 30 This posture

is consistent, of course, with Whitman's call for a poetry of reform

in America. It's interesting, though, that McGrath's poetry is scandalous

in a different way from his predecessor's. If Whitman was dismissed

from the Indian Bureau in Washington because of the sexual frankness

of Leaves oj Grass, McGrath's poetry is "unAmerican" because it

challenges the very political-economic system on which this country has

come to be based."

The rebellious spirit of McGrath expresses itself in many contexts-

the violence of war, the suicide of the working poor, the misuse of

Blacks. But beneath all of these cases, indeed, within the very fabric

13



of daily living seems to lie the corrosive power of capitalism,

McGrath America's "real" religion:

In New York at five past money, they cut the cord of his sleep.

In New York at the ten past money they mortgaged the road of

his tongue

Slipped past the great church of song and planted a century of

silence

On the round hearts' hill where the clocktower the cock and the

moon

Sang.

At a quarter past money in New York a star of ashes

Falls in Harlem and on Avenue C strychnine condenses

In the secret cloisters of the artichoke.

At half past money in New York

They seed the clouds of his sleep with explosive carbon of psalms,

Mottoes, prayers in fortran, credit cards.

At a quarter to money

In New York the universal blood pump is stuffed full of stock

quotations:

And at Money all time is money.

False consciousness.

Bcbbery.

Meanwhile, of course

-wait for the angel .

(p. 127)

Even the workers themselves-McGrath's bulwark against the illusior

of lndustryv=-sometirnes become "fully transistorized ... lost" (I

124). J3 In Part II I he gives us the motive for his resistance:

And anger sustains me-it is better than hope-

it is not better than

Love ...

but it will keep warm in the cold of the wrong world.

And it was the wrong world we rode through then

and ride through now-

(p. 128)"

Such an attitude is foreign to Whitman, but crucial to McGrath, an

if Whitman's poetry fades in the days following the Civil War, McGrat

as a modern shaman never lacks for spirit in his castigation of America:

materialism.

At the same time, McGrath sees Crazy Horse, not as a negativ

force, but as a leader, aware of the great evil in the universe, but sensitive to the regenerating power of the natural universe. Like Craz

Horse, he somehow believes he can "bring back the buffalo." Hence

the poet opens Part II looking for a breeze, a "wind" that is

14



constant abrasive

North Dakota

is everywhere.This town where Theseus sleeps

on his hill

Dead like Crazy Horse.

This poverty.

This dialectic of money-

Dakota is everywhere.

A condition. (p. 103)

Notice that the image here is one of a dead or sleeping society, while

the rhythms suggest a kind of gentle prairie breeze, creating a retlec-

tive mood. But what the poet would have us reflect on is that this poem

itself (a wind) is constant and abrasive as it attempts to jar America

"free of that order";5 that holds it "A nation in chains/ Called

freedom" (p. 148). Ironically, in a spirit and tone reminiscent of theyoung Whitman-"Smile 0 voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!/ Earth

of the slumbering and liquid trees!" (Sec. 21)-McGrath would even

bring back Crazy Horse to challenge the existing order:

All things are doorways: all things are passing

And opening into each other always ...

our housedoor equally

On Crazy Horse and the Cadillac. (p. 204)

Here the faster tempo creates an urgency to choose. In short, while

remaining firm, the shaman-poet modulates his style as an invitation

to change-either/or, resistance or compliance. Donahue says that

Whitman's later poetry is destitute because of a gap between his old

metaphors and new historical f'acts." McGrath finds those newmetaphors.

Whitman, then, idealizes American democracy and in the process

transcends the social evils of society-Chari says he does not purport

to portray evil. 37 McGrath, on the other hand, introduces the concept

of a wounded society and calls for a poetic resistance to its sources

within America. A third distinction between the two long poems=-the

one of overall form-grows out of the first two. I have said that both

use a type of free verse that avoids regular rhyme and set meter, that

both write from personal experience in instinctive rather than formal

ways, and that both are in a way mystics who envision new worlds for

their readers. Because of his notion of wound, however, and a resistance

that is built into his language and tone, McGrath chooses an underly-

ing form that seems to fit his purposes, one that may be rooted in In-dian music rather than the music of civilized man, namely that of the

Hopi kachina. McGrath says that "in a small way the whole poem is

15



a kachina."38 This dance involves McGrath's vision as well as a poeti

method, and a review of the musical aspect of Leaves, compared wit]the music in Letter, clearly shows the manner and extent to whicl

McGrath depends on the music of primitive America for his composi

tion as a whole.

Whitman's Leaves apparently has no real plan but grew organical

ly around a number of general themes. 39 In creating the work Whit

man's own personality and experiences were primary, a group of "in

ner principles breaking through the maze and confusion of life on th.

surface. "40 Selincourt says the long poem is analogous to music, when

the words are like notes and the independent lines find a continuitj

in the overall rising and falling of the poet's orchestration of moods. 4

Brooks claims, however, that it is not a classic composition, but "8

series of emotional pulsations, of attitudinal posturings, of mecurially

shifting responses" that work themselves out organically. 42 In short,

Whitman as a poet used the music of words not only to describe the

world, but to recreate it in a new and idealized fashion. Rexroth right-

ly observes that this is an example of "realized eschatologyvv=-the

bringing of a future utopia into the American present through a tech-

nique that is at its heart musical.

Consider, for example, in "Song of Myself,"

Endless unfolding of words of ages!

And mine a word of the modern, the word En-masse.

A word of the faith that never balks,

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time

absolutely,

It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,

That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

I accept Reality and dare not question it,

Materialism first and last imbuing.

(Sec. 23)

Notice how the one line is carried into the next and expanded upon,

creating the sense of flowing in and out-Selincourt says that in Whit-

man each line is like an individual sea-wave"'-and through lines of

variable shapes and sizes he develops a virtual musical composition,

and through it a whole world view. Interestingly, the very theme of

this fragment is what he is doing musically throughout Leaves, name-

ly, spiritualizing the material world with his poetry. And that is hisdream for America, what Rexroth calls, "the liberation and univer-

salization of selfhood. "4;

McGrath, on the other hand, claims that his poetry has no previous

16



ly true of the Hopis." Natalie Curtis adds this:

To seize on paper the spirit of Hopi music is a task as impossi-

ble as to put on canvas the shimmer and glare of the desert. Hopi

music is born of its environment. The wind sweeping among the

crags .... Its echo is heard in the song of the Hopis yodelling

through the desert solitudes. There, in that wild land, under the

blaze of the Arizona sun, amid the shifting color of the tinted sands

and purple-blue of the sharp-shadowed rocks, must the songs be

heard to be heard truly."

That McGrath is aware of these peculiarities in Indian music is ev

dent throughout Letter. A typical passage reads:

Far.

Dark.

Cold.

(I am a journey toward a distantAnd perfect wound)

-to the stark

And empty boyhood house where the journey first began ...

-to search there, in the weather-making highs, in the continental

sleep

For the lost sign, blazed tree, for the hidden place

The century went wrong: to find in the Wobbly footprint Cal's

Country ..

-and sat there

in those first nights:

waiting

(Genya, the ransom of cities, and all my past, sleeping

And the ghosts loud round my light)

Waiting.

(The poem is merely what happens

now

On this page ... )

Night here.

The breathing dark.

Cave of sleep.

I enter.

Descending is ascending.

Go down

Past the stone decades and the bitter states of the anguished and

enchanted salt

Toward my dead.

A static of hatching crystals ticks in the rock

Like a clock of ice.

18



The dead swim through the night-stone, homing

Into my side.

Come now

my darlings

my dear ones

begin

The difficult rising.

I'll help you.

Slip your foot free of the stone-

I'll take you as far as the river.

Sing now.

We'll make the kachina.

(pp. 133-34)

This piece is a summary of the entire poem-the poet's boyhood, the

part played by his friend Cal in his philosophy of work, the impor-

tance of recognizing the societal wound, his caution that the city has

glossed over America's corruption, the need for redemption, and the

part the poem itself plays as an invitation to take part in such a rite.

The meter may be seen in terms of a classic six-beat line, just as it is

possible to view the poem overall as a parallel to Dante's journey to

Hell, with Cal as the poet's Virgil, or guide.

But McGrath, again as shaman, is also versatile enough to use In-

dian poetry and music to give even greater scope to his art. In this sense

the rhythm as well as the visual movement is irregular, even erratic-

as though a deliberate distortion of normal tonal patterns. Many of

the sentences are either short or fragmented, and the number of stresses

in each line varies, thus generating irregular rhythms. Basically, the

overall movement is downward but does not follow any set pattern or

melody. The relation of this paragraph to pictorial art is also evident,

for the poem seems to "go down stairs," and as in Indian music thekeynote is at the end of a descending melodic interval. Here we find

such final words as "waiting," "dark," and "kachina," which also

represent in a visual way the inner kiva where the Hopi kachina dancers

begin their ceremonial gestures.

Truly the poem is rooted in the environment, not only of Dakota,

the poet's symbol of America, but of the Hopi desert and stone mesas

where the kachina itself is performed. The poet's rhythm-with its er-

ratic beat-helps place us in this Native American setting. IfWhitman's

poetic form is symphonic, McGrath's represents a different kind of

music-adiatonic or without scale. And the future here is not "real-

ized" by the poet as in Whitman's "Song of Myself"; rather, as in

a liturgical rite, it is an invitation for all to join in the chorus (more

important for the Indian than particular singers) for purposes of bring-

ing on the future. It is a tribute to McGrath that he is able to utilizeso many aspects of Hopi culture-its music, ritual, and mythology-

to underpin the very texture of his own poetic style.

19



It is also interesting that IVlcGrath chose the Hopis as a grour

work for his poem. The Sioux, of course, are the Indians of the plaiwhere McGrath grew up, and we have seen how he has used Wound

Knee and Crazy Horse from the history of this nation. The Sioux w e

nomadic and warlike-and this posture is important for McGrath. F

his overall form and final vision, however, he goes to the Hopi, whi

means "peace." They are a sedentary tribe, an agricultural corn-growl

group who lived not in teepees, but atop huge desert mesas. O'Ka

says that their view of life is the opposite of American thinking; n

interested in competition and progress, they promote a harmony wi

the natural world." They look not to technology, but to their ancie

myth of creation and re-creation. A new world-called Saquasohuh

will emerge from the dark womb of the earth (the kiva), and it is tl

kachina dancer who brings on this world renewal."

Consider, for instance, this passage:

Wait for the Angel.

S A QUA SOH U H:

the blue star

Far off, but coming.

Invisible yet.

Announcing the Fifth

World

(Hopi prophecy)

world we shall enter soon:

When the Blue Star kachina, its manifested spirit,

Shall dance the kisonvi for the first time.

In still light

Wait.

"But it's cold here!"Hush.

I'll take you as far as the river;

But no one may dream home the Revolution today though we offer

Our daily blood, nor form from the hurt black need

The all-color red world of the poor, nor in the soviet

Of students transform this might; nor alcohol compound

Manifestoes; nor pot set straight a sleepy rifle's dream.

Still we must try.

S A QUA SOH U H.

Far off: the blue

Star.

The Fifth World. Coming.

Now, try:

Necessary, first, the Blue Star kachina to dance the kisonvi;

Necessary that the kapani at the crown of the head must be

Kept open always.

Loosen your wigs.

20



I go to the far

Countryto the sacred butte and the empty land

I'll make

The kachina ... (pp. 131-132)

The broken sentences and uneven rhythms here are those of a dance

as described above, and the tempo and sounds vary from the soft and

slow "wait" and "hush" to the louder and fuller immediacy of "SA-

QUASOHUH." This is not music that follows external guides, but com-

prises organic patterns that rise and fall instinctively, without the aid

of notation or the accompaniment of instruments. Nor can one miss

the "red" and "black" colors, which are as much a part of the painted

ceremony as they are the political theme.

Thematically, the Saquasohuh is the fifth or new world. The "blue

star" signals this yet invisible world. "Kisonvi" is the plaza outside

and near the kiva where the dance takes place. "Kapani" is the head-

one of the five regions of the body for the Hopi-where the news strikes

a man; it is topmost; hence the phrase "Loosen your wigs." The angel

in this section is most important. Whitman's city has been lost-"Los

Angelized." Now the new angel is called upon by the kachina dancer,

which in this case is the poet, who says, "I'll take you to the river"-

the age-old symbol of new life. McGrath therefore sees his poem as

a kachina and invites us all to help make it, indeed to "change the

world" (p. 108). This is not to say McGrath is Hopi, anymore than

he is communist or pagan. Duss points out that he is all of these things,

and Christian too, depending on the context. 5l In fact, McGrath in-

corporates many perspectives in this passage-the pagan myth, therevolution, even the Christian prayer "our daily blood." It is a

multifarious poetic "rite" in which we are all invited to participate.

But in a larger sense, the entire poem is a kachina. When McGrath

makes that journey back to Dakota in Part I-and Parts II and III go

back and circle the same themes--it is a journey to the "dark interior,"

as though going into a kiva. The many journeys, whether back to or

out from Dakota are laced with such important kachina terms as

"nightsong," "stone" or "granite," "holy Earth." The dark aspect,

however, is always accompanied eventually by a bright side, as though

coming out of the kiva through the "night of rock" toward the "com-

mune of light." The poet often refers to such things as a "wind" or

"breeze," "sunrise on the rock," a "blue" or "blazing star." It is in-

teresting that the kachina ties the entire Letter together. The journeyto the "dark dominion" of Dakota is "around a wound" (Wounded

Knee), which keeps "turning, turning" in Yeats ian fashion, but that

journey also embodies the spirit of Crazy Horse

21



Inventing again the commune and [the) round

Song gathering the Crazy Horse Resistance ... (p .117).

Still the music is primary-in McGrath's words: "a new jazz, a blue

for our old Fourth World"56 (that's us) as the poet takes you and m

"as far as the river" and helps "slip your foot free of the stone" -th

entrapment in what McGrath calls "false consciousness."

Though this poet denies he is a disciple of Whitman, the two belen

to a common tradition, and one builds upon the other. Where McGratl

emerges-in theme and tone-as different is in his exposing a prairi.

wound and challenging the nation to account for it. Whitman wa

disturbed in the 1870s when his democratic vision for America seemer

incompatible with reality. McGrath-no less a visionary, and longin,

for community sharing-dramatized America's fault and his resistanc:

to it through Indian history. His solution is not Jeffersonian, but Hop(a five thousand-year-old tribe that itself faced the ravages 01

Americanization in the 1940s).57He uses their myths and music to struc-

ture his poem, inviting us all to join in the redemptive rite, a kind of

religious ceremony where the music is both old and new-an old kachina

and a newjazz. Whitman, worried about America's moral corruption,

called for a poet with the fire and abandon of Isaiah. McGrath in his

own way answered that call.

Notes

Ijames Bertolino, Introduction to "McGrath," Epoch, 22 (1973), 207.

'Diane Wakoski, "Passages Toward the Dark: Thomas McGrath,"

American Book Review,S (May-June, 1983), 18.

'William Childress, "Thomas McGrath," Poetry Now, Vol. 2, No.4, 38.

"Cleanth Brooks, "Walt Whitman," inA merican Literature: The Makers

and the Making, Vol. I, Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, and Robert Penn

Warren, eds. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), p. 942.

'Bernard F. Engel, "Thomas McGrath's Dakota," Midwestern Miscellany,

4(1977),3-7.

'Joseph F. S. Srneall, "Thomas McGrath and the Pastoral Tradition,"

North Dakota Quarterly, 48 (Autumn 1980), 31-32.

'Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett,

eds. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973). "Song of Myself" is indicated by sec-

tion numbers; otherwise page numbers are taken from this text.

'Thomas McGrath, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Parts I and II (Chicago:

Swallow Press, 1970). Page numbers are taken from this text.

'Brooks, pp. 934-35.

"Brooks, pp, 947-48.

"Frederick C. Stern, " 'The Delegate for Poetry,' McGrath as communist

22



Poet," in Where the West Begins. Arthur R. Husebce and William Geyer, eds.

(Sioux Falls: Studies for Western Studies Press, 1978), p. 123.

"Brooks, pp. 930-32, 936-37."Rory Holscher, "Receiving Tom McGrath's Letter," Moon and Lion

Tailes, 4 (January 1976),36.

"Engel, p. 3

"Erling Duss, "Waiting for the Angel," Dakota Arts Quarterly (Sept. 1977),

p. 30.

"Walt Whitman, "Democratic Vistas," in American Literature, p. 1011.

"Vernon Louis Parrington, "Afterglow of the Enlightenment: Walt Whit-

man," in Main Currents in American Thought, III (New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1958), 84-86.

"Barrett Wendell, Literary History oj America (New York, Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1900), pp. 472-73.

"Whitman, p. 1012.

"Mark Vinz, "Poetry and Place: An Interview with Thomas McGrath,"

Voyages to the Inland Sea, 3, John Judson, ed. (La Crosse, Wisconsin: Centerfor Contemporary Poetry, 1973), p. 40.

"Thomas McGrath, "McGrath on McGrath," Epoch, 22 (1973), 219.

"Ted Hughes, "Secret Ecstasies," Flights: Readings in Magic, Mysticism,

Fantasy, and Myth, David Adams Leeming, ed, (New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 13-15.

"McGrath, 217.

"Thomas McGrath, The Movie at the End ojthe World (Chicago: Swallow

Press, 1972), p. 130.

"Wakoski, p. 18.

"Richard Volney Chase, Walt Whitman Reconsidered (New York: Will iam

Sloane Associates, 1955), pp. 81-82.

"Brooks, p. 945.

"Karl Shapiro, "The First White Aboriginal," in Start with the Sun: Studies

in Cosmic Poetry (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 63.

"Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1942).

Sandoz details the gradual growth of Crazy Horse's posture toward the Whites

as they took over the land and world of the Sioux. In the 1960s Eugenia and

Tom McGrath edited several editions of an anthology of poetry entitled Crazy

Horse.

"Thomas McGrath, "Thomas McGrath: An Interview," Another Chicago

Magazine, 5 (Chicago: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1980), p. 74.

"Holscher, p. 32. Holscher recalls McGrath's appearance before the House

Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, causing him to lose his

job, and to which he reacted strongly in the writing of Letter to an Imaginary

Friend.

l2Will iam Childress, "Thomas McGrath," Poetry Now, Vol. 2, No.4, 38.

Here McGrath contrasts work and riches, saying work is the source of art, while

aft1uence brings only phoniness.

"Holscher, pp , 36-39. This critic shows how McGrath's resistance takes

on various styles, even-in this case--dreamtalk, when the workers have sue-

23



cumbed to the illusions of industry, and about which the poet reflects at a

distance from the immediate experience, but which he has now internalized

and transformed."McGrath, Passages Toward the Dark, p. 128.

"Thomas McGrath, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, p. 102. McGrath quotes

Claude Levi-Strauss, who says that the only hope of salvation lies in the "ab-

surd and despairing attempt to get free of that order."

"Denis Donoghue, Connoisseurs of Chaos (New York: Macmillan, 1965),

p . 41.

"V. K. Chari, "Whitman and Indian Thought," Western Humanities

Review, XIII (1959), 297.

"Thomas McGrath, "A Note on Letter to an Imaginary Friend," Introduc-

tion to Passages Toward the Dark (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press,

1982), p. 96. Here McGrath details many of the abstract styles used in Part

III of Letter.

"Roger Asselineau, "The 'Plan' for Leaves of Grass," in The Evolution

of Walt Whitman, trans. Roger Asselineau and Richard P. Adams (Cambridge:Belknap Press, 1960), pp. 11-13.

'"Henry Alonzo Myers, "Whitman's Conception of the Spiritual Democracy,

1855-1856," in American Literature, VI (Duke Univ. Press, 1934), p. 246.

"Basil De Selincourt, Walt Whitman, A Critical Study (New York: Russell

& Russell, 1965), pp. 94-118.

"'Brooks, p. 936.

"Kenneth Rexroth, "Classics Revisited XXXV: Walt Whitman," Satur-

day Review, Sept. 3, 1966,43.

'''Selincourt, p. 98.

"Rexroth, 43.

"McGrath, Passages Toward the Dark, pp. 93-96.

"Thomas McGrath, "Conversation and Reading," Cassette tape, pt. 1

(Fargo, ND: North Dakota State Univ. Library). McGrath traces the origin

of Midwestern poetry to the Plains Indians; Sitting Bull may be the authorof this example.

"Benjamin Ives Gilman, Hopi Songs (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.,

1908), pp. 1-8.

'''Gilman, p. 112. Here is an example of Gilman's representation of a

pathway of tones in the malo-katcina:

Oherred.

s'

c t . '

c'';T

a.

9fe

d

c.

~_J,

G

F

B'

.. t! I 0'

"

24



Documents

Letters & Leaves - McGrath's Indian Culture vs. Whitman's Poetic Tradition - 1985