I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

-Walt Whitman, “To a Stranger”

 

Walt Whitman’s poem “To a Stranger” represents a unique loneliness and longing. The poem begins with him calling out to a “passing stranger” who is unaware of the speaker, and has no idea what emotions the speaker feels at seeing the stranger as they “flit” past each other (line 4).

What sticks out most to me, while reading this poem, is that Whitman alternates between masculine and feminine pronouns, relying primarily on the gender-neutral second pronoun “you.” “You must be he I was seeking,” the speaker says, “or she I was seeking,” and two lines later says, “You…were a boy with me or a girl with me” (lines 2 and 5). The speaker does not seem concerned about whether this singular stranger is male or female, and implies that they could be either and it would not matter. Our speaker is male, as he declares in line 7 that he has a beard, but regardless of the stranger’s gender, the two souls have the sort of kinship where they eat together and sleep together. The speaker notes that the stranger gives him “the pleasure of [their] eyes, face, flesh” and that the stranger takes “my beard, breast, hands, in return” (line 7). These are incredibly intimate parts of the speaker’s body, giving an incredibly erotic tinge to this poem.

While at first glance, this poem might seem creepy (no one wants to be accosted by a speaker insisting that they were kids together), Whitman does a wonderful job making it feel relatable and not frightening at all. Instead, he makes the emotions of longing universal, and the shifts in pronouns make this pronoun more applicable to the reader (even as it emphasizes Whitman’s own bisexuality). The speaker feels that he knows this stranger intimately, and feels a sense of responsibility for the stranger, one that is predicates on faith and hope. “I am to wait,” the speaker says—presumably until the stranger accepts their bond— “I do not doubt I am to meet you again, / I am to see to it that I do not lose you” (lines 9-10).

Although the speaker expresses faith that he will meet this stranger again, this is tinged with loneliness and longing. The stranger, for whom the speaker feels so much affection, is distant and unseen, and the speaker’s role is simply to wait. This poem would also have struck a chord with those who remembered the Civil War, and would have felt the same uncertainty about if their lovers and loved ones would return from the war, feeling equal parts hope and desperation.

Although I learned about Whitman’s sexuality and his experiences during the Civil War for the first time in class, and they helped me to better understand “To a Stranger,” this was not my first time reading this poem. I came across it on a blog a few years ago, and I was immediately taken with its final lines. To me, they contained an almost inexpressible yearning for something that was difficult to articulate. As a teenager, that feeling of desperately wanting something I couldn’t explain and didn’t really understand was very present, and I liked that Whitman was able to put words to something I was feeling, but couldn’t express.