Whitman in Washington [Terence Winch]

Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Walt Whitman, 1875, chalk on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

 For six years I worked in the old Patent Office Building in Washington, DC, where the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery are located. The building began its service to the people in 1840, making it one of Washington’s landmarks. I worked there as an editor from 1986 to 1992, before the renovations that were completed in 2006. In my time, the building still had the feel of the 19^th century. I entered every morning through the basement, which always made me think of the catacombs—bulging, thick walls, narrow corridors, stairs that might have met the building code a hundred-plus years ago.

What really made this a special place for me was that Walt Whitman had trod these very same corridors during the Civil War, when the  building became a makeshift hospital:

“Overflow casualties were housed in the Capitol, in churches, taverns, and schools, in the Georgetown prison and General Lee’s Alexandria mansion. Whitman found them lying between rows of glass display cases in the Patent Office, ‘noblest of Washington’s buildings.’ The Greek Revival shrine to American ingenuity was normally an exhibition hall for models representing ‘every kind of utensil, machine, or invention, it ever enter’d the mind of man to conceive.’ …Now it was a hospital, ‘a curious scene, especially at night when lit up. The glass cases, the beds, the forms lying there, the gallery above, and the marble pavement under foot—the suffering and fortitude to bear it in various degrees—occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be repress’d.’” —Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life.

Old Patent Office Building, Wash. DC, ca. 1846. Library of Congress. This image dates back to the early years of photography.

“Whitmanesque” has come to mean that big-hearted, empathetic embrace of whatever life places in one’s path, that exuberant appetite for experience. Whitman’s invention of American poetry (with a co-credit to Emily Dickinson) has a lot to do with that expansive spirit, and with his frankness, whether about war or sex. He did not back down, or look away. He did not write like anyone who came before. His use of language—open, plain, direct—is the antithesis of poetic. He remains alive in his work because the work itself is so immediate. It is language with a pulse.

There’s a remarkable 1875 chalk-on-paper drawing of Whitman by Thomas Wilmer Dewing in the American Art Museum’s collection. Reproductions of it fail to capture its depth and power. When you look at the original, you almost feel like you’re face to face with Walt himself. Because of conservation concerns, the work is very rarely displayed, but I used to ask one of the curators to take it out of storage and show it to me every once in a while. One of the perks of working in a museum.

When the museums in the Patent Office building re-opened in 2006, I was delighted to find a little room in the Portrait Gallery solely devoted to Whitman—with paintings and photographs, and rare copies of his work on display. I went back a little while afterwards to further explore the Whitman room, only to discover it had been replaced. Too bad—they should have made it a permanent exhibition.

A version of this post was the first piece I ever wrote for the Best American Poetry blog, which shut down in Sept. 2025. That was on July 27, 2008. Back then, I included a sonnet I had just written after a visit to the Walt Whitman rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike on the way back from Connecticut:

Namesakes

OK. We get on 95 and drive all day.

We stop at the Walt Whitman rest stop

on the Jersey Turnpike, and the dog and I

both pee in a secret wooded area just beyond

the trash cans and parked cars. We are hurtling

through space and time, through Connecticut,

New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland.

O Walt—and Joyce Kilmer—your poems have earned

you Turnpike rest stops! Horrible places jammed

with anxious travelers in need of a bathroom.

I buy bacon and egg on a croissant and wash it down

with water. But these are not the worst of monuments.

Joyce could praise those leafy arms, while Walt would

love the salt of the earth in their restless wandering.

New Jersey Turnpike at the entrance to the Walt Whitman Service Area in Cherry Hill Township, Camden County, New Jersey

This was the first post I ever wrote for the erstwhile Best American Poetry blog, back on 27 July 2008.  It has been edited and updated here. 

©Terence Winch  
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