What is your interpretation of Walt Whitman's poem The Explorers?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you mean the excerpt from "Passage to India," that is often assigned the title, "The Explorers," as for example in Ralph Vaughn Williams' Sea Symphony. This section begins with the line, "O vast Rondure, swimming in space . . . ."

This poem focuses on one of Whitman's recurrent images, the poet as explorer. Among all the heroic explorers of history and romance, Whitman holds that the poet has a place of honor. Whitman's ideal poet, the one he strove to become, launches out into the unknown. He does not simply imitate what has been done before, but strikes into new territroy. Notice this passage:

After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

Here you see, Whitman's poet succeeds and fulfills the work of sea captains, engineeers, inventors, scientists, and ethnologist. He is "the true son of God," singing his songs.

Whitman expresses his absolute faith in the ultimate value of the poet's role in these ecstatic lines, which refer to the poet's "caroling," "singing," "chanting":

Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail . . . .

Whitman addresses his Soul, the soul of a poet, in terms reminsicent of the greatest explorers of all time:

Greater than stars or suns,
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth . . . .

Whitman concludes this poem with an absolute shout to the soul, urging creativity, risk, willingness to challenge the unknown. The height of his exuberance is attested to by the triple repetition at the end: "farther, farther, farther . . . ."

Sail forth -- steer for the deep waters only,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

This was Whitman's aim, his intent, his ideal--to write poetry that would go where poet "has not yet dared to go," to risk "ourselves and all." It was also his achievement. The "exploring" he did in his Leaves of Grass remade poetry for all time. His "free verse" has all but replaced conventional metered rhymes and blank verse. Even contemporary poets who choose a formal structure with meter and rhyme do so with a sense of spontaneity, freshness, and freedom from standardization that would have been unthinkable before Whitman.