Poetry is not Pretty Words

Manhattan was never called Mannahatta. It was not called Mannahatta at the time Walt Whitman named his poem Mannahatta.

Walt may have believed the aboriginals named the island Mannahatta, and, honoring the aboriginals, Walt used their name, or what he took to be their name.

The aboriginals never called anything Mannahatta. They didn’t name a city Mannahatta, which can be objectively proved by noting the aboriginals had no cities.

Whatever the case may be, using Mannahatta conveys a vivid sense of aboriginals who were “people”, “people” in a vivid democratic sense, in Manhattan, before there was Manhattan– in a “power to the people” democratic– or aboriginal-negating sense?

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