“Song of Myself,” from “Leaves of Grass.” Whitman. How to Deconstruct Whitman’s Poem to Self and the Universe. Long.

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From Whitman’s Preface to Leaves of Grass:

• The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions.
• The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another
• What has ever happened . . . . what happens and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all . . . . they are sufficient for any case and for all cases . . . none to be hurried or retarded . . . . any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass and the frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them are unspeakably perfect miracles all referring to all and each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.

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Part 1. The first line of Leaves of Grass defines the entire poem: I celebrate myself, and sing myself. First, this will be an intensely personal poem. It is all told in the first person. Second, it is not a just a declarative statement. It is a celebration. It is a song.

Crucial to understanding and appreciating Leaves of Grass is to participate in it. Whitman is not talking at you. He is talking with you: And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

It is also crucial to participate in the informality of the poem, Written in free verse, it is conversational in its own way, as though you and he are sitting together, sharing a dialogue. I loafe and invite my soul,/ I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,/ Hoping to cease not till death.

Song of Myself represents one day in the life of Whitman, one day in the life of the earth.

Part 2: Mentioned earlier is that the poem “is conversational in its own way.” Part of what makes it so unique is that the “song and celebration” aspect is at times ecstatic. Whitman doesn’t just live, he consumes life: I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,/ I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

Whitman actually offers his own advice on how to read his poetry:

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,

nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Part 3. Another aspect of what made Leaves of Grass so unique is Whitman’s inclusion of sex as natural and important: Urge and urge and urge,/ Always the procreant urge of the world. Part of that discussion includes the not just occasional homoeroticism in the poem. (It is significant to note here that Whitman was a male nurse during the Civil War, and the horror and the brotherly love that he witnessed there stayed with him.) As for whether Whitman was gay is still controversial. What is incontrovertible is the intensity of his feelings of what he often referred to as “comradeship.” As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,/ Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty, Whatever the case may be, Whitman is often treated as a gay icon.

Part 4.

The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,

The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,

Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;

These come to me days and nights and go from me again,

But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,

Part 5. Whitman experiences an ecstatic, transcendent union of his body and soul, an erotic encounter when his soul, which had been leaning on his body, turns over, parts Whitman’s shirt, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,/ And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet. To evaluate the shock value of some of these passages, remember that Whitman is writing at the same time as Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson. The shock value is not prurient, of course, but a kind of wake-up call to our minds and senses to engage fully. This sensual union of body and soul is epiphanic/orgasmic: Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,/…And that a kelson ¹of the creation is love.

In Part 6, Whitman delineates the ideas behind the leaves of grass metaphor. Basic to the concept is the thought of grass as a uniform utterance (hieroglyphic), i.e., a ubiquitous expression of growth and regeneration, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/ Growing among black folks as among white,

This section begins with the innocent questioning of a child: A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;/ How could I answer the child? Whitman then proceeds to anaphorically² “guess” what it is:

• the flag of my disposition, representing his earthiness
• the handkerchief of the Lord, metaphorically “dropped” for us to question
• a child of the vegetation
• the beautiful uncut hair of graves
• the growth from the breasts of young men who have died.

That last line is a key to much of what constitutes Whitman’s vision of the cyclical nature of life and death, with grass the symbol of regeneration. He asks, what do you think has become of the dead? And answers:

Luckier than we think, because death is not an end; life springs from it.

Parts 8-10 lists many scenes that comprise different walks of life, all of which Whitman embraces, again emphasizing the limitlessness of his embrace: city life, country life, the hunter, the sailor, the boatmen and clam-diggers, the trapper, and most revealingly, the runaway slave that Whitman takes in and feeds and bathes and clothes and nurses ( And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles). He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,/ I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

The brief but intense Part 11 is one of the most famous sections of the poem, due to the almost overbearing intimacy of Whitman’s empathetic observation of a woman’s observation of Twenty-eight young men bath[ing] by the shore. The tone is set with the comparison adjectives, the bathers so friendly, the woman so lonely. She apparently is a woman of means since she owns her own fine house–and sadly can make herself handsome and richly drest as she hides behind the window blinds, peering at the young men bathing, obviously withdrawn in her isolation.

Whitman wonders, Which of the young men does she like the best?/ Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

He then imagines her (Where are you off to lady?) imagining herself splashing in the water there with the bathers, but, of course, is stock still in [her] room. The pathos Whitman shows here is wholly indicative of the empathy, expansiveness, inclusiveness, and universal love he has expressed so far in the poem. Still in imagination, Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, the joy of the dancing and laughing exacerbating the lonely truth of her isolation. The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them

The description of the bathers then becomes somewhat erotic as she continues to watch them, the young men’s beards glistening with water that also ran in little steams [that] pass’d all over their bodies. In her imagination the woman traces the water’s path over the bathers’ bodies with her (unseen) hand, trembling with the touch of their temples and ribs. Possibly even more erotic is the vision of the young men, presumably naked, lying on their backs in the water, exposed, with the suggestive, their white bellies bulge.

But in the end, of course, They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Parts 12-20 continue to sing of and celebrate different walks of life, concluding with: I exist as I am, that is enough,/ If no other in the world be aware I sit content,/ And if each and all be aware I sit content./ One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself.

Part 21: I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

Part 22 is an ode to the sea, and a query about the nature of virtue and vice. What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder,/ The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

Part 23 is an ode to science.

Part 24 is an example of why Whitman is often referred to as the” “Poet of Democracy.” His inclusiveness is limitless. He does not exist in isolation but in sympathy with the universe, both personal and abstract: Walt Whitman, a kosmos.

On a personal level, he is at one with body and soul and in sympathy with others. No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,…Whoever degrades another degrades me…I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,/ Copulation is no more rank to me than death is….Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,/ The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

On a cosmic level, his relationship with the universe is often ecstatic, if not orgasmic: A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books….To behold the day-break!….Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,/ Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

Part 27: I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,/ To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.

Part 28, roughly halfway through the poem, is perhaps the most ecstatic section, with language effusive and exaggerated. He begins with the enervative reaction to touch, a sexually suggestive arousal of the blood: Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,/ Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, a draining process, stiffening my limbs,/ Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip….Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, leaving him post-coitally exhausted, as it were, No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, at the mercy of the urgings of the blood, They have left me helpless to a red marauder. The intensity of the sensation, almost an assault, has left him senseless, so that, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits. Touch has become villainous, ravishing beyond his control,  my breath is tight in its throat, Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

In discussions of Whitman, one cannot separate the poet from his culture. Whitman is writing in a somewhat restrictive “Victorian” environment of sexual repression, so his blatant treatment of sexuality was often seen as not just bold, but shocking. From AI Overview:

Parts 29-43 address Whitman’s connection to society, others, and the world, a compendium of how he saw the Universe.

Part 44. It is time to explain myself—let us stand up. In Part 44 Whitman envisions himself as a kind of “star-child” in his relation to the cosmos. I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be. Immense have been the preparations for me. The seeds for his being have existed from the beginning, in dormancy, patiently waiting, taking his time: Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,/ I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,/ And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon…. Cycles ferried my cradle. He evolved long before his natural birth– Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,/ My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. The universe was complicit in and oversaw his creation: All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me, until, finally, he came to fruition: Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

In Parts 46-48 Whitman becomes more personal with the reader, advocating independence in spirit, curiosity, and abandon. My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road./ Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,/ You must travel it for yourself. But we are never alone, joined in camaraderie, what Whitman called “adhesiveness.” If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,/ And in due time you shall repay the same service to me. And in a final admonition, he urges a release from torpor–Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,/ Now I wash the gum from your eyes,; a complete, fearless, immersion in life–You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life; and a heedless abandonment: Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,/ Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,/ To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

Iconoclastic when it comes to self-realization, Whitman believes that, as a teacher of athletes: He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The boy he loves, becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right; wicked, if need be, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear; but sensitive to unrequited love or a slight. (And, wholly Whitmanesque, preferring scars and a beard to shavers [latherers], and well-tanned to pale.) I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?/ I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,/ My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

Whitman extends his demystification of social mores to include God: And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is. And the miracle of God is apparent everywhere, in Whitman’s democratic view of mankind–In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass; in every moment of every day--I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then; and in every element of daily life–I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name, God is not an exclusive club; he is open to everyone, and, in fact, is everyone and everything, always there, always available.

Part 49. And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. In the endless cycle of life, death is requisite to new life. And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, for from that fertile stuff springs the sweet-scented white rose, leaf buds (leafy lips), and the sensual swell of melons (the polish’d breasts of melons). It is all part of the cycle: And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,/ (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

In Parts 50 and 51, in preparation for closing the poem, Whitman sums his relationship with the reader, acknowledging, in some of the most famous lines of the poem, its complexity and sweep of ideas: Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself, concluding with the most defining line of the entire poem: (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Part 52 closes out the poem, the end of Whitman’s day, and the annual cycle (52 parts/weeks). In a gloriously epiphanic³ and transcendent conclusion, Whitman characterizes himself, again in very famous lines–I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,/ I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world—barbaric yawp is frequently applied to Whitman’s poetry, i.e., a voice unconstrained by propriety or rules, loud and purposely intrusive, bidding an end to the poem and us in a glimmering image of farewell: I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,/ I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

But the farewell, of course, is only temporary since we are all connected eternally, in life’s cycle–I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love– and indwelling in the natural world to which we have returned, immanently available to each other: If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles, part of the leaves of grass.

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1. A reinforcing structure in wood ship construction or general hull stiffening. ↩︎
2. the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses ↩︎
3. Epiphany: a moment of revelation or insight. ↩︎

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