a lament for Walt Whitman's America
to cameras
no, more wars! the chant
echoes, echoing
around the Congress chamber
swelled with the yawp of USA!
FYI: The joshi (prefatory note), “a lament for Walt Whitman's America,” serves as the thematic anchor of the tanka. By invoking the “barbaric yawp” from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, the tanka establishes a pointed irony: what Whitman envisioned as a raw, soulful cry of individual liberation and democratic vitality has here been transformed into a partisan, nationalistic roar.
Linking the “yawp” directly to the chant of “USA!” suggests that the “barbaric” quality Whitman celebrated as natural and poetic has become performative and aggressive. This connection bridges the joshi to the final line, revealing how the “America” being lamented has shifted symbolically from Whitman’s open road to the echoing chamber of Congress.
The joshi works effectively by establishing a melancholic, almost high-literary tone that immediately crashes immediately into the "modern reality, i.e. Trumperica," of the tanka. By invoking Whitman’s idealized vision of America, the poem creates a baseline of democratic optimism against which the final “yawp” reads as a distortion—or even a perversion—of the original spirit.
Note: “Song of Myself,” the central poem of Walt Whitman’s 1855 collection Leaves of Grass, is a sweeping meditation on the self and its relation to the world. Written in innovative free verse, the poem celebrates an expansive identity that connects the individual with nature and the broader human community.
Composed during the American Renaissance, the poem reflects the influence of Transcendentalism and the democratic optimism of Jacksonian democracy—a movement associated with Andrew Jackson that promoted the belief that political power should rest with the “common man” rather than traditional elites.
Whitman’s sweeping catalogs of people, occupations, and everyday scenes create a democratic panorama in which all lives are interconnected, culminating in his famous declaration: “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
