“America” by Walt Whitman
History of the recording of “America”
Dr. Folsom, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, had long heard rumors that a
recording of Whitman's voice existed, even though the poet died in 1892, just as the era
of sound recordings was dawning. But the Whitman scholar didn't find the recording until
1992, when a professor of English at Midland College mentioned it in an article he
submitted to Dr. Folsom's journal, the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. The professor,
Larry Griffin, had found the recording on a cassette tape in Midland's library. He had
been playing it for his students for years.
The cassette tape includes a 1951 NBC radio program, called "Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow," that was narrated by the journalist Leon Pearson. On the tape, Mr. Pearson
says that NBC reproduced the recording of what is believed to be Whitman from a
damaged wax cylinder that was found in the collection of a former New York elevator
operator named Roscoe Haley. Scholars have determined that the cylinder was recorded
in 1889 or 1890 -- a little more than a decade after Thomas Edison's 1877 invention of
the phonograph. The cylinder has since been lost, but a recording of NBC's recording of
the cylinder is now in Dr. Folsom's possession.
No one can be sure that the recording is of Whitman's voice, Dr. Folsom says, but few
scholars have tried to refute it. The four verses that were rescued from the recording are
from "America," a six-line poem that Whitman first published in the New York Herald in
1888. "No one knows if the final two lines of the poem were ever recorded by Whitman,"
Dr. Folsom says. "It certainly sounds as if he is concluding with the fourth line, but it's
possible he went on with lines five and six." If so, the cylinder was apparently too
damaged for the last two lines to be retrieved.
To Dr. Folsom's knowledge, this is the first time the recording has been made available
on line.
America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
The last two lines, not in this recording, are:
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
(adamant: extremely hard,
unyielding mineral, like a
diamond)