Walt Whitman and Muriel Rukeyser Among the Jews

Abstract This essay uses Walt Whitman’s early writings to show that there is a long foreground to the poet’s claim to be an honorary Jew in the 1855 Leaves of Grass. Whitman wrote about Jews and Judaism from the earliest days of his career. To suit his purposes, he appropriated versions of the religion and culture in his journalism, in stories, and in the novel Jack Engle. The essay bears on a broader understanding of Whitman’s symbolic significance for Jewish American women poets including Muriel Rukeyser, who appropriated Whitman’s iconic Americanism to suit her political purposes, especially during and immediately after World War II. As a queer woman, an American, and a Jew, Rukeyser developed an uncanny interest in Whitman’s autopsy, which she read as confirmation of his bisexuality. The essay argues that Rukeyser found her second-class status as an American Jew less constricting than the bonds of bourgeois womanhood.