By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I’ve lived for 65 years and have two college degrees, but sometimes I feel ignorant. Walt Whitman triggered my most recent brooding about this nettlesome blemish.
Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892, survived the tumultuous American Civil War, moved from job to job, and cared for his elderly mother and disabled brothers. In his spare time, he also published 160 poems, authored two novels, and wrote dozens of essays.
Given that extensive body of work, it’s remarkable—or remarkably sad—that besides hearing an occasional passing reference about him in a movie (Bull Durham in 1988 and Dead Poets Society in 1989), I never encountered Whitman in any deliberate way.
All that changed recently.
Whitman never came to Utah when he was alive. Fortunately, 134 years after he died, “Dance for Walt Whitman” did arrive here.
My daughter Megan’s dance company (Repertory Dance Theatre) performed it as part of their 60th anniversary season. The RDT 2026 dance restaged a work first performed in Utah in 1961.
That’s the year I was born. Back then, there was not much modern or contemporary dance happening out here in the old American West.
Things had started to change, however, in the 1940s when the renowned Virginia Tanner began teaching creative dance in Salt Lake City and at the University of Utah. Her Children’s Dance Theatre earned national recognition in the 1950s (and still thrives today).
That early fame helped Tanner convince the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a three year project to bring modern dance choreographers to Utah to teach and perform. In the spring of 1961, the first visiting artist—Tony-award winning Helen Tamiris—arrived.
Whitman’s poetry had inspired Tamiris’ choreography for many decades. In Utah, she hired University of Utah dancers like Shirley Ririe (my Megan later danced her role in 2026), Joan Woodbury, and Linda Smith (RDT’s director emeritus), and in June 1961 they debuted “Dance for Walt Whitman,” with music from “Rounds for String Orchestra” by David Diamond.
After reviewing a film of one of those first Utah productions, a 2007 article in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review titled “Whitman and Modern Dance,” described the performance as a “work of deeply moving intensity.” The writer explained:
“[A] voice reads Whitman’s words from ‘Salut au Monde!’ beginning with, ‘Each of us inevitable, / Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth…’ and a portion of the Prologue to ‘Out of the Cradle.’ A company [of men and women] perform a vibrant dance conveying the strong affirmation of the first of these quotations, and, in an adagio movement,…women in a circle, often on their knees and with arms entwined, move in gentle, swaying motions to the second quotation. The men return in a work dance that clearly suggests strenuous labor, though it is executed in joyful exuberance. At the conclusion, the men and women reunite in a final demonstration of Whitman’s broad salute to all of the world’s peoples. The overall impression created by the work is one that aptly parallels Whitman’s own joyfulness, inclusiveness, openness of body postures and gestures, and, in an expansiveness of arm and leg movements, suggests the Whitman hallmark, an extended length of poetic line.”
All the Utah newspapers covered the unique 1961 production. One reviewer called it “the most exciting single ensemble I think I ever witnessed on the Kingsbury stage.”
It was equally exciting when RDT performed it again 65 years later in 2026. After watching it, I decided I should read more about Walt Whitman.
And so I did. Already I have much to ponder from the words of the man many consider to be the American master of free verse.
I concur with his tribute to the dignity of work. (“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong…)
I marvel as he compares a spider spinning its web to the searching of a human soul. (“Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”)
I mourn the death of Abraham Lincoln with him. (“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done…”)
I admire his self-confidence and sense of community. (“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”)
It is a vast body of work, and I’ve only scratched the surface. I guess in my journey as an old dog to learn a new reading trick, I must choreograph my own dance with Walt Whitman.
***
Bonus content…my favorite Walt Whitman quotes (so far):
Theology
“In the faces of men and women, I see God.”
“I believe that much unseen is also here.”
“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”
Companionship
“We were together. I forget the rest.”
“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”
“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.”
“I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.”
Writing
“A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.”
“The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”
“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.”
Life and mortality
“The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”
“Either define the moment or the moment will define you.”
The value of every life
“Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.”
Truth
“If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”
“Re-examine all that you have been told, dismiss that which insults your soul.”
“Be curious, not judgemental.”
Art and beauty
“To the artist has been given the command to go forth into all the world and preach the gospel of beauty.”
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
