A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;How could I answer the child?.... I do not know what it is any more than he.I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?I'm no expert on Walt Whitman, and given that this poem ('Song of Myself') has been celebrated by everyone from Neruda to Borges to Pessoa to Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society ('I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world'), I doubt I'm educating anyone by bringing it again to their attention. That said, this was just what I needed this morning as I warmed into my first day alone in the country after too many weeks of a lack of privacy so intense that I have read and written almost nothing. Nervous, wondering if I might piss away the week allotted to me if I couldn't become inspired, I flicked idly through these pages over coffee, remembering, as I often have in the maybe ten years since I first read them, how they once impressed me, and soon found myself enthralled, a tear in my eye, as I read of the child and his unanswerable question. Now, by any popular notion of the word I am not religious, and I have a handful of staunchly anti-religious friends who'll attest to it, though I'll own that these friends strike me as both too literal-minded and too combative (they 'protesteth too much'), and that these days I either ignore or attempt to dissuade them every time they head off on a rant, so narrow and senseless and insensitive do such rants seem to me. The point is: God? 'The Lord'? Hell, to be honest I could give a shit, at least as regards any organised religion's conception of the subject. But something in that line about the handkerchief ('that we may see and remark, and say Whose?') moves me, the same way Bob Dylan (the born again Dylan!) moves me when he sings 'In the fury of the moment / I can see the master's hand / In every leaf that trembles / In every grain of sand.' And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.Why should I wish to see God better than this day?I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.Forever and ever. The constant mystery we know is beyond our powers to explain; even the smallest child who looks at the stars knows that. The constant, ever-renewing mystery which we can tap into now and then, loafing and 'observing a spear of summer grass', but which ultimately we must, again and again, leave behind, knowing it will never go away, but equally that we cannot gaze at it for long.I celebrate myself,And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you....These are the thoughts of all men in all ages in all lands, they are not original with me,If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing,If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing,If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing....It is you talking just as much as myself.... I act as the tongue of you,It was tied in your mouth.... in mine it begins to be loosened.Big words, huh? As bold as can be. As earnest and without irony (Pessoa did it with irony) yet hardly at all portentous or laughable. Strange, that Whitman should say here 'Logic and sermons never convince', when it seems that this whole epic rant (all 60 pages) is the sermon to end all sermons. But he admits to contradicting himself, explaining 'I am large.... I contain multitudes.' And at one point he falters in his ecstasy:Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping,I discover myself on a verge of the usual mistake.That I could forget the mockers and insults!That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and the hammers!That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning!For all its joy and exulting in the simple fact of life, 'Song of Myself' is ever aware of suffering: 'the suicide on the bloody floor of the bedroom', the runaway slave ('He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north'), 'the mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on'.I do not ask the wounded person how he feels.... I myself become the wounded person'....I play not a march for victors only.... I play great marches for conquered and slain persons....This is the meal pleasantly set.... this is the meat and drink for natural hunger,It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous.... I make appointments with all....I am the poet of commonsense and of the demonstrable and of immortality;And am not the poet of goodness only.... I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also....I don't claim that Whitman's work is perfect, and in fact I skipped or skimmed several passages this morning (I've never been one for lists, and Whitman, in his passion to encompass multitudes – of people and places – is occasionally enamoured of them), but I do think 'Song of Myself' is some kind of a masterpiece. The introduction to this edition (Penguin's 1986 reprinting of 'The First (1855) Edition') compares it to the Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Rimbaud's Illuminations, The Chants of Maldoror, Thus Spake Zarathustra and the works of the Beats, and suggests that 'Song of Myself' 'should be judged... as one of the great inspired (and sometimes insane) prophetic works that have appeared at intervals in the Western world'. I agree (though not necessarily with the 'insane' part). With its insistence on a universal spirit beyond the senses or the intellect, and its bold adoption of the voice of that spirit, it resembles nothing so much as one of those letters dropped in the street, signed with the name of God. I said it is without irony, but a gentle self-mockery runs through it, enough to convince us of the humility of the man as he wrestles his personality into submission to hear snatches of the inner voice. 'Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fogs with linguists and contenders,' he says early on (sounding again like Dylan: 'You've been with professors and they've all liked your looks'), and just before the famous yawp he admits: 'The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me.... he complains of my gab and my loitering.' But in the end, though he can't refrain from fictionalising his own portrait in a dandy's effort to give his outpourings the credibility of the proletariat ('Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs'), the impression he leaves is one of deepest attachment to, regard for and identification with the reader.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,Missing me one place search another,I stop some where waiting for you.Leaves of Grass was self-published by Whitman, a printer's assistant, in Brooklyn in 1855.
This has instantly earned a spot in my top five favorite books. [It seems that most read this in high school; I did not. But I'm glad I didn't-- I'm unsure whether I would've fully appreciated it.]This is the celebration of humanity, the world and everything in it, and immortality. It's inspirational like no other book I've ever read. This book *spoke* to me. It whispered, it cajoled, it caressed, it embraced me wholly and completely and unreservedly. If a book can be music, this is it. It sang to me.This is an ode to equality, to renewal and rebirth, and to the interconnectedness of all living and unliving.This is a must-read for lovers of words and language. Playful and insightful and timeless.* * *Published in 1855, this work was condemned for being 'immoral' because of unabashed atheistic themes. Whitman believed in: the godliness of humans-- the divinity of humans; the bible as myth; and the equal value of virtue and vice, the refined and vulgar.* * *My favorite excerpts / snippets / passages: + "I love him though I do not know him."+ "I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, regardless of others, ever regardless of others, maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine."+ "These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me."+ "If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing."+ " If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing. If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing. If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing."+ "I play not a march for victors only...I play great marches for conquered and slain persons."+ "Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won."+ "This hour I tell things in confidence, I might not tell everybody but I will tell you."+ "What is a man anyhow? What am I? And what are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, else it were time lost listening to me."+ "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less, and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them."+ "All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means."+ "And I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night."+ "I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood."+ "I exist as I am, that is enough."+ "One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself."+ "The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me."+ "I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, and I say it is great to be a woman as to be a man, and I say there is nothing greater than the mother of a man."+ "I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life."+ "I believe in the flesh and the appetites, seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."+ "Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from."+ "I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, and accrue what I hear into myself... And let sounds contribute toward me."+ "I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals... And they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied... Not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth."+ "Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them."+ "I know perfectly well my own egoism, and know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less, and would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself."+ "I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy."+ "I tramp a perpetual journey."+ "Not I, not anyone else can travel the road for you, you must travel it for yourself."+ "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, if you want me again look for me under your boot soles."+ "If you see a good deal remarkable in me I see just as much remarkable in you. Why what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less?"+ "I am eternally in love with you and with all my fellows upon the Earth."+ "What is it that you made money? What is it that you got what you wanted?"+ "Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, in things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best, in folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest and strongest and lovingest. Happiness not in another place, but this place... Not for another hour, but this hour, man in the first you see or touch... Always in your friend or brother or nighest neighbor... Woman in your mother or lover or wife."+ "You are not thrown to the winds... You gather certainly and safely around yourself. Yourself! Yourself! Yourself forever and ever!"+ "How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my soul! How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it! What is called good is perfect, and what is called sin is just as perfect."+ "I cannot define my satisfaction... Yet it is so, I cannot define my life... Yet it is so."+ "Every existence has its idiom... Everything has an idiom and tongue."+ "And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful: and that I think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, and that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true is just as wonderful, and that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth is equally wonderful, and that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful."+ "Great is today and beautiful, it is good to live in this age... There never was any better. Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy,Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.Great are yourself and myself,We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,What the best and worst did-- we could do,What they felt... Do we not feel it in ourselves?What they wished...Do we not wish the same?Great is youth, and equally great is old age... Great are the day and night;Great is wealth and great is poverty... Great is expression and great is silence."
What do You think about Leaves Of Grass (2006)?
Walt Whitman is my prophet of love and optimism. His words, his attitude, and his exemplary life have summoned me to deeper humanity. Did you know that Whitman spent all his free time and money upon the wounded and the dying soldiers in army hospitals during the American Civil War? “I am faithful, I do not give out.” He brought them candy and nuts and good cheer. He held their maimed limbs, played games with them, and wrote letters home for them. He whispered comfort in the ears of the dying. When I read "Leaves of Grass" at a vulnerable time in my life, he whispered to me as well. Here is what Whitman told me about love, compassion, death, faith, individuality, faith, immortality, and searching. For those of you who only have time to skim this review, I have boldened a few key passages.Love All the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, and that a kelson of the creation is love. Behold, I do not give lectures. When I give I give myself. [ “Kelson” is a timber that runs parallel to the boat’s keel and strengthens it.] (Song of Myself) I have loved the earth, sun, animals. I have despised riches,/ I have given alms to every one that asked, stood up for the stupid/ and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,/ Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and/ indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,/ Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,/ and with the mothers of families,/ Rejecting none, permitting all.(On Blue Ontario’s Shore) Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! Let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law. Camerado, I give you may hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? (Song of the Open Road)Compassion I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person. With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for victors only, I play marches for conquered and slain persons. DeathAll goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. (Song of Myself) FaithI see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever. (Song of Myself)Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded, frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, disheartened, atheists, I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers, I take my place among you as much as among any. (Song of Myself)ImmortalityI do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world,/ I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, in vain I try to think how limitless,/ I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their/ swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day/ be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,/ I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,/ I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have/ their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and/ the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,/I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are/ provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the/ deaths of little children are provided for,/ (Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)(Assurances)IndividualityRest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality. (To a Pupil)Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. (Song of the Open Road)That you are here– that life exists, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. (O Me, O Life) I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. (Song of Myself)I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, We convince by our presence. (Song of the Open Road)WonderI believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.(Song of Myself)The JourneyI tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods. No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, 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. (Song of Myself) Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.(Song of Myself) ConclusionI tramp a perpetual journey with my friend Whitman, who whispers good cheer and optimism in my ear. He convinces me not with arguments and rhymes--but with his presence. If I occasionally lose him, I know I will find him somewhere waiting for me. He is not just my favorite poet; he is my spirit guide to the wonders and joys of the gift of life, and he encourages me to contribute a verse. May 13, 2013*****Sckenda’s Other Favorite Poets (view spoiler)[Here are links to my reviews of other poets who have been my guides:Emily Dickinson teaches me close observation of the microcosm (contrasted with Whitman, the poet of the macrocosm).http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...Pablo Neruda teaches me songs of love and social justice. (In contrast to feverish Neruda, smiling Whitman did not appear to vent his anger.)http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...*****PBS VideoWalt Whitman Song of Myself: An American ExperienceHere is 2-minute introduction to a marvelous and moving, high-quality documentary about Whitman. If you like the promo, you can find the entire documentary on YouTube. The documentary uses music and images and voice in a way that makes sensitive souls weep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm-n9w... (hide spoiler)]
—Steve Sckenda
In 1860, when the United States was on the brink of civil war, Walt Whitman produced a book of poems that he hoped would provide a roadmap for preserving the Union. It was “Leaves of Grass,” the third edition.Reading Whitman is always an exhilarating experience but when reading from this facsimile edition put out by the University of Iowa Press, there’s a touch of something else – a sense of history. The introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy does an excellent job of situating the collection within its historical framework, showing clearly the issues that Whitman was trying to address and how he proposed to do so. One of Whitman’s central ideas for preserving the Union was fervent brotherhood as portrayed in “Calamus,” a poem regarding love between men but which gains a deeper political meaning in the 1860 edition:t“States!tWere you looking to be held together by the lawyers?tBy an agreement on a paper? Or by arms? . . .tThere shall from me be a new friendship – It shallttbe called after my name,tIt shall circulate through the States, indifferent of ttplace . . .tAffection shall solve every one of the problems of ttfreedom,tThose who love each other shall be invincible,tThey shall finally make America completelyttvictorious, in my name.tOne from Massachusettes shall be comrade to a Missourian,tOne from Main or Vermont, and a Carolinian andttan Orgonese, shall be friends triune, more preciousttto each other than all the riches of the earth.”Stacy also points out that Whitman – who numbered the stanzas in the 1860 edition as if they were Bible verses – believed that a new humanistic religion would save the Union and he was establishing himself as its prophet: “I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion.” In the same poem – “Proto-Leaf” – in which this poet-prophet sets the tone and purpose of the entire collection, he (nearly) sings:t“I will make a song for These States, that no onettState may under any circumstances be subjectedttto another State.tAnd I will make a song that there shall be comity byttday and by night between all The States, andttbetween any two of them.tAnd I will make a song of the organic bargains of ttThese States – And a shrill song of curses ontthim who would dissever the Union;The entire collection isn’t all so explicitly focused on its times as are the quotes mentioned above but its poems – some reworked from the previous two editions and 146 new to the third (unfortunately this is not clearly itemized in the introduction) -- were geared towards saving the Union, whether in a subtle or a direct way. And apart from the collection’s mission (and it’s occasionally strident poetry), some Whitman scholars believe that the third edition is the best: a general improvement over what came before and superior to those editions that followed.Although the third “Leaves” was a critical success, 19th century America obviously didn’t have the patience to listen to Whitman’s song long enough to find its national salvation. But with the new facsimile edition, it is possible to hold in one’s hands a collection of poems, exactly as it appeared 150 years ago, written by a patriotic poet who believed in his ideas so fervently that he thought they could prevent a war.(This review was also published at CurledUpWithAGoodBook.com).
—Kathryn
Did you know that the letters in "Leaves of Grass" can be rearranged to spell "Asses of Gravel"? If you find yourself anagramming the letters in the title rather than reading the poetry, it's a good sign you're not into the book. But I really wanted some of whatever Whitman was smoking that made him so ecstatically, ebulliently enthusiastic about every molecule on the planet. Including his own b.o. "The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer." Huh??? Was this guy sniffing glue along with those arm-pits? I made it through about 85 pages, then let it go. Maybe I'll come back to it in the future. There ARE some beautiful passages hiding in among all those exclamation marks.
—Jeanette "Astute Crabbist"
