On this day we celebrate liberty, not as a good idea, but as a way of life. A radical document was signed at the in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence was actually ratified by the Continental Congress on July 2 but tweaked into its final version and announced on July 4, two days later.
In the ensuing struggle through the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution adopted in 1789, our foremothers and forefathers did their best to codify freedom, to build a structure that was both protective and expansive, protective so that rights could not be removed, expansive so that civil rights could increase in response to evolving human consciousness. On the day the document was signed, human slavery was legal and women could not vote. Most citizens were okay with that. Today, slavery has been outlawed and women can vote and run for president.
July 4, 1776 was a great day for poetry.
Poetry thrives on freedom, the free engagement of an individual’s imagination with internal and external circumstances. Of course, nothing external can eradicate the freedom of the mind. Many great poems have been written in the land of kings, queens, and tyrants. Many great poems have been written in prisons around the world. But all people thrive and therefore poets flourish when they enjoy unencumbered play in the realm of imagination. Imagination is the way we interpret reality. At age 16 Albert Einstein imagined himself chasing down and then riding on a beam of light. Ten years later he formulated the Special Theory of Relativity.
Walt Whitman, the great bard of American democracy, wrote in his preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass:
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth
have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States
themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
Poetry is deep-shaft mining of the human soul, the soul of an individual, the soul of a nation. The Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson asked,
“ . . . who would sing the new country in a new voice”
In 1855 Whitman began singing that new voice. Many still do. Robert Frost spoke poetically of choice at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 and Richard Blanco spoke the verse of freedom at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013.
In a world where many are terrified by freedom, where some want to impose thought-regimes on the human mind, who want to tell our imaginations to cease and desist, who make straight-jackets for our intelligence, and outlaw expressions of creativity, we need fearless and unfettered voices that instill loyalty to the human imagination.
We will not grasp the significance of this day until we experience in our imaginations a life under religious and/or political tyranny. If we do this fantastically, (i.e. imaginatively) we will be motivated to take responsibility for fulfilling our personal freedom, and avoid experiencing the disaster of some tyrannical fanatic’s version of the ‘good’ life in the real world.