Way More Than Words: Walt Whitman's Digital World on Rutgers-Camden Web Site

CAMDEN - Poetry on the page can create instant mental visuals and rhythms. But for many seeking to understand a poem and a poet’s world, especially that of a poet who lived more than 100 years ago, it helps to hear the poem out loud.

Thanks to the online journal Mickle Street Review (http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu), users can get a close hearing of Walt Whitman’s works in the privacy of their own homes. In the new edition of the annually published journal, Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” enjoys 21st-century multi-media options that create the kind of meaningful links that the Good Grey Poet sought to foster throughout his life in the late 1800s.

“This issue is dedicated to sights and sounds related to Whitman’s world and the study of his works. Readers can now easily link up to the various sounds of Brooklyn that Whitman would have had in his ear when writing the poem,” says Tyler Hoffman, editor of the journal based at Rutgers University’s Camden campus, where he is an associate professor of English.

Hoffman points out that the current online edition of the Rutgers—Camden Whitman journal also makes available for the first time a wide range of spoken-word LPs featuring actors like Orson Welles and Ralph Bellamy reading from “Leaves of Grass.” Because the recordings are on LPs, the dozen readings now online through the site haven’t been appreciated by Whitman fans for some time. Mickle Street Review has digitized them and made them free for all to hear, thanks to Hoffman’s tireless efforts to secure the recordings on eBay.

“They will be a great resource for teachers at all levels who want to bring Whitman into the classroom. These readings take on a different life through various actors’ voices. We were able to collect most of what is available of Whitman on record issued in the 20th century,” adds Hoffman, who also purchased five Whitman-related reel-to-reel films that are accessible for free through the Mickle Street Review’s web site.

Whitman, whose house in Camden is a few blocks from where RCA built its sound recording headquarters not too long after the poet’s death, probably would have embraced the digital age. “Whitman would react positively to the digitization of his poems and performances of his poems. All his life he tried to reach broader and broader audiences, sometimes not successfully,” says Hoffman.  “He’d be impressed that his poems could be so widely disseminated through the internet.”

To interview Hoffman, contact him at (856) 225-6615 (office) or thoffman@camden.rutgers.edu.

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