Finding God around the Corners of Walt Whitman’s Poetry

Perhaps the quintessentially American poet, Walt Whitman “mentions God frequently, but he is not a conventional believer,” writes Sarah Rindner. She goes on to subject the religious spirit she finds in Whitman’s best-known work, Leaves of Grass, to a Jewish reading:

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

These verses are from the section of Leaves of Grass titled “Song of Myself.” Rindner observes:

There’s a stereotype of religious life that it is obsessed with life after death, and perhaps also the creation stories that precede both. Whitman is not interested in the beginning or end, and he is right [not to be]. For Whitman, and, I think, for us all, the correct place to focus is the present: on our obligations, our blessings, and our opportunities to grow in the here and now. As the Psalmist reminds us, and is true every day, “This is the day that the Lord made; we shall exult and rejoice in it.”

And then there is Whitman’s description of grass itself as “the handkerchief of the Lord/ A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,/ Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?”—to Rindner, “a potent encapsulation of how a religious seeker might find meaning in nature.” Reading this poem, she confesses, “I see God’s name somewhere in the corners as well.”

Read more at Tradition

More about: American Religion, Judaism, Poetry, Psalms

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy