Are you the new person drawn toward me?

This particular poem by Walt Whitman was originally titled “To a personal admirer,” and the first time it appeared in publication was in the 1860 version of Leaves of Grass. It was included in the group of poems known as the “Calamus” grouping. The poem reappeared in the 1867 Leaves of Grass publication under the title “Are you the new person drawn toward me?”. The work is a lyric poem, which is a poem detailing the thoughts and feelings of the poem’s speaker. Written in a single stanza with nine lines, the poem is written in free verse with no set rhyme scheme or meter. Considered to be a writer of the Romantic period of American literature, Whitman “bridged the gap between Realism and Transcendentalism” (“Walt Whitman!!" Outrageous Fortune, Mary Baldwin University, 18 Sept. 2014). This connection between Realism and Transcendentalism is evident in “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” where the speaker questions the ideal and the real, claiming that the individual they address lives in a world of illusion. Taken together with the context of the Civil War, which was just about to initiate when Whitman published “Are you the new person drawn toward me?”, readers can interpret the skepticism and duplicity inherent in the poem as indicative of the political turmoil being experienced by the nation.

Poet Biography

Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was born Walter Whitman in Long Island, New York. Whitman’s mother was Louisa Van Velsor, and his father, Walter Whitman, Sr., was a carpenter. The estate where Whitman was born can still be visited as a State Historic Site on the National Register of Historic Places. When Whitman was around four years old, his family moved to Brooklyn, where his father dabbled in real estate yet still found it difficult to provide for his wife and nine children.

Whitman attended public grammar school while in Brooklyn, though he is considered to be “largely self-taught” and “acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible”. Whitman held a variety of occupations throughout his life. When he was 12, he took his first job working for a printer, The Long Island Patriot. When he was 17, he began teaching in Long Island schoolhouses, working as an instructor until he became a journalist in 1841. In 1838, Whitman founded a weekly newspaper called The Long-Islander, which he sold in 1839. When he was around 27 years old, Whitman took on the role of editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He was let go from this position “because of his support for the antislavery Free Soil faction of the Democratic Party” (Jeffares, Alexander Norman. “Walt Whitman." Britannica, 22 March 22).

Released from his editor duties, Whitman traveled to New Orleans and worked for the Crescent for three months. He returned to Brooklyn in 1848 after seeing slaves being auctioned off in Louisiana. He founded another paper called the Brooklyn Freeman. After returning to New York, he worked in construction and real estate from approximately 1850 until 1855.

Throughout all of his various occupations, Whitman “continued to pursue his literary and journalistic interests by dabbling in conventional poetry, short stories, and a novel” (“About Whitman.” Walt Whitman, 2018). He had gotten some poems and short stories published as well. However, in 1855 Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman was not able to get a publisher to print his collection of poetry, so he had to sell a house so he could print the volume on his own dollar with the help of his printer friends the Rome brothers. Whitman sent a copy of the collection to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who highly praised the collection. Leaves of Grass was not widely popular, though academics, scholars, and poets alike saw it as a harbinger of a new style of poetry. A second edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1856, and Whitman would continue to edit and add to various editions of his collection. The work extended over six editions between 1855 and 1892 and has been “considered a masterpiece of world literature” (“About Whitman.” Walt Whitman, 2018). The first (initially untitled poem) of the collection, “Song of Myself,” is one of Whitman’s most famous pieces.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Whitman’s brother, George Washington Whitman, was wounded in Fredericksburg, Va. Whitman traveled to Virginia to visit his brother, but he was so overwhelmed by the wounded and dying soldiers he met in the camp that he decided to stay in Washington, D.C., to help. In Washington, D.C., Whitman worked for both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior. Whitman was let go from his job at the Department of the Interior after his superior discovered Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass. This direct superior found Leaves of Grass to be “offensive,” and therefore Whitman lost his position. After the Department of the Interior, Whitman worked for the attorney general. Whitman ended up staying in Washington, D.C., for 11 years, visiting the various camps and providing presents for soldiers from both the Confederate and the Union sides.

As a result of these experiences with the Civil War, Whitman’s poetry took on a sense of greater social necessity and commentary: “He was no longer a just poet from New York of Long Island; he now belonged to and spoke for the nation” (“About Whitman.” Walt Whitman, 2018). The influence of the Civil War on Whitman’s poetry is evident in his collection Drum-Taps published in May 1865 and Sequel to Drum-Taps published in the fall of 1865.

In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke and left D.C. to live closer to his brother in Camden, New Jersey. While he was in Camden, Whitman’s mother passed away. The seventh printing of Leaves of Grass sold well and provided Whitman with enough income to purchase a house. In these later years, Whitman received visits from some very prominent literary figures and become “the first American poet to achieve international acclaim (“About Whitman.”Walt Whitman, 2018). In 1888, The Complete Poems and Prose was published. Whitman died on March 26, 1892, the same year the last edition of Leaves of Grass was published. The final volume of prose and poetry Whitman worked on up until his death was Good-Bye My Fancy. Essayist Horace Traubel was a friend of Whitman’s and recorded Whitman’s life history for posterity.

Poem Text

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

Whitman, Walt. “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” 1860. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Whitman’s poem opens with a first-person speaker addressing an unknown, second person. The speaker warns the addressee that they aren’t who they appear on the outside or who the stranger hopes they are. The speaker then asks a series of questions to the addressee, hinting at the vision of perfection the stranger holds onto. In asking these questions, the speaker implies they are, in fact, the opposite of this vision. The speaker asks if the stranger assumes that they will fill some ideal for them, if they assume that the speaker is going to become their lover. The speaker pushes further and asks the stranger if they think the speaker is trustworthy, patient, and true. To the speaker, the stranger is not able to see beyond the exterior, where they are projecting all of their desires and hopes. The addressee is a dreamer and living in a world of illusion.