Today is the 143rd anniversary of the firing of Walt Whitman from his day job as a government clerk by Lincoln's Interior Secretary Harlan, a prairie fundamentalist who objected to scandalous poetry, Leaves of Grass, being Whitman's.
Here is an insightful essay on the event from the perspective of the dear dead days of impeachment, which at this distance looks less important as a cultural indicator than Whitman's firing does...
Here is the full context of the Mencken remark quoted in the essay cited above.
"Let us summon from the shades the immortal soul of James Harlan, born in 1820, entered into rest in 1899. In the year 1865 this Harlan resigned from the US Senate to enter the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln as Sec'y of the Interior. One of the clerks in that department, at $600 a year, was Walt Whitman, lately emerged from three years of hard service as an army nurse during the Civil War. One day [August 18, 1865], discovering that Whitman was the author of a book called Leaves of Grass, Harlan ordered him incontinently kicked out, and it was done forthwith. Let us remember this event and this man; he is too precious to die. Let us repair, once a year, to our accustomed houses of worship and there give thanks to God that one day in 1865 brought together the greatest poet that America has ever produced and the damnedest ass."
--H.L. Mencken's Prejudices
And here is a brief correspondence on the subject.
On Aug 18, 2008, at 06:56, a friend wrote:
ah how refreshing
fired for poetry
and not for political views
On Aug 18, 2008, at 07:23, slangist wrote:
except that
allowing for poetry
is a political stance
and disallowing poetry
is a political stance
and disallowing poetry
because it has too much fucking in it
is definitely a political stance
and so
my dear
i disagree
completely