Is This Then a Touch?

I have waited too long to return to reading that great American, Walt Whitman. We are now on Page 32 of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the 1855 (first) edition.

The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,
The steam-whistle . . . . the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;
The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,
They go to guard some corpse . . . . the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.

I hear the violincello or man's heart's complaint,
And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset.

I hear the chorus . . . . it is a grand-opera . . . . this indeed is music!

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip;
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by the indolent waves,
I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail,
Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,
Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.

To be in any form, what is that?
If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and its callous shell were enough.

Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

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.

Is this then a touch? . . . . quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes and holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields,

We begin the page surrounded in sound as the din of the city becomes majestic passion of the opera. The poet is ecstatically consumed yet ever observing how the experience feels.

The poet considers himself and how he differs from, say, "the quahaug and its callous shell." He is a conductor of extraordinary sensitivity.

I'm not clear on what "this" refers to in "Is this then a touch?" Perhaps the reference is to the poem itself or the act of creating poetry. The "this" becomes figured as the motions of intimates and lovers. More than anything, the poet seems to want to describe what it's like at the limits of human sensation.

We Found Our Own

Time again to read good, old Walt Whitman. We are now on Page 31 from Walt Whitman's 1855 edition--the first--of Leaves of Grass.

Whitman sings life and energy:

[Page 30] Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.
[Page 31] We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

Whitman's poet must absorb the sun's energy, it's information, and radiate it back into the world as poetry. The poet must do this. It's is a prerequisite of life and utterly necessary.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.

It provokes me forever,
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough . . . . why don't you let it out then?

The "It" here seems to be speech, the figure of song and poetry. It seems to be voice, emblem of the individual. And the individual is both unique and part of the larger fabric of the world. Yet speech and voice are somehow different from the individual. They converse with the individual, provoking him or her to make more speech and to articulate more. Whitman's poet then makes an abrupt turn and praises silence before the world.

Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.

Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?
Waiting in gloom protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts . . . . it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
Happiness . . . . which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.

My final merit I refuse you . . . . I refuse putting from me the best I am.

Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.

Whitman's poet here admonishes speech and voice. Can you imagine? A poet denying his essential vehicle! For the poet, it is best not to invest too much or all the time in articulation. It can be better simply to be and to listen.

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 hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames . . . . clack of sticks cooking my meals.

I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love,
I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses . . . . sounds of the city and sounds out of the city . . . . sounds of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them . . . . the recitative of fish-pedlars and fruit-pedlars . . . . the loud laugh of workpeople at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship . . . . the faint tones of the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence,
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves . . . . the refrain of the anchor-lifters;

The poet hears a mosaic of sounds. We began this page with the poet's need to articulate. The poet, both person and soul, ascends like the sun. "We found our own," we join with the world and make our own world. We absorb and we radiate.

It Shall Be You

I have been completely derelict in my obligation to press on with pages from Walt Whitman's 1855 edition--the first--of Leaves of Grass.

I don't wish to have a full month pass without presenting at least one page, so here is page 30.

If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body;
Translucent mould of me it shall be you,
Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you,
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life;
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you.
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you,
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;
Sun so generous it shall be you,
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you,
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.

I dote on myself . . . . there is that lot of me, and all so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.
I cannot tell how my ankles bend . . . . nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit . . . . nor the cause of the friendship I take again.

To walk up my stoop is unaccountable . . . . I pause to consider if it really be,
That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and schools,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the daybreak!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

The earth by the sky staid with . . . . the daily close of their junction,
The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.

Reminder of Life

Continuing our study of Walt Whitman’s 1855 edition (the first) of Leaves of Grass, page 29 begins with the poet continuing to assert his work. The poet is a “reminder of life,” we learn on the previous page. On the current page, the idea of life is focused to virility and vitality, as the poet makes “short account of neuters and geldings” and instead favors “men and women fully equipped.” The poet is immersed in socio-political activity also. The poet himself beats “the gong of revolt” and participates in making plans with fugitives.

But our page is distinguished by the poet naming himself:

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest.

With images of unlocking and opening doors moving next to bold assertions against degradation and for human connection, the poet claims the most audacious role in the American democracy:

I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

The poet again draws on lists and anaphora to explain his instrumental purpose, to make audible the repressed and oppressed sounds that animate America:

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my finger across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

These lists make the poet appear as a reflection of America. The poet is not only a painter of scenes or a smith of beautiful and polished artifacts. For this poet, life is generated and fueled everywhere, and even sex and death may be addressed freely.

The poet’s final claim of this remarkable page asserts the thorough divinity of the poet.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

The poet here authorizes and sanctifies his role. He is a priest of life, a prophet, and a miracle worker who transforms puritan angst into humanist piety.

Foofoos and Scrofula

Page 28 of the 1855 Leaves of Grass is a wonder. Walt Whitman the writer has had his poetic voice driving to a point such as this:

What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder,
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

Don't misunderstand: I am not saying that Whitman has purposely been leading to this specific moment, that there has been a single and set teleology to all that has come before.

Rather, I see the poem and the poet as articulating more haphazardly. Both poem and poet explode with names and classifications. Everything in, out, above, and across America and "man" becomes part of the articulation.

Yet, with that quote above, I read the poet as unraveling these classes. We call a man "mean." We call her or him an "infidel." But how can this be? I don't think the poet accepts these categories, or at least their signifying limitations.

The poet seems to admire the sciences and recognizes they necessarily place classifications and limitations in the world. But these classes and limits are not all, and the poet has no obligation to them other than to love them:

Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

If the sciences are houses, the poet--and people generally--lives elsewhere. The houses of the sciences are the antechambers of the larger house the poet explores.

The Place of the Poet

As we move through Walt Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Grass, I wonder whether Whitman composed or revised with page layout in mind. One of the joys of this page, page 27, is the balance of "Earth" and "Sea."

Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?
It is a trifle . . . . they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night!

Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!

Prodigal! you have given me love! . . . . therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love!

Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

You sea! I resign myself to you also . . . . I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together . . . . I undress . . . . hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft . . . . rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet . . . . I can repay you.

Sea of stretched ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you . . . . I too am of one phase and of all phases.

Partaker of influx and efflux . . . . extoler of hate and conciliation,
Extoler of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms.

I am he attesting sympathy;
Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?

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 wick-edness also.

Between the earth and the sea is the night. Whitman's poet is lover of the night, the earth, and the sea. Whitman's poet accepts the chance to sing for and about both goodness and wickedness.

I am happy to travel up to the earth and the sea with Whitman's poet. We have climbed upward, it seems, from the grains all across America and are now lofted far above the planet. Charles Dana, a contemporary of Whitman, reviews the 1855 edition with a fair eye but perhaps a prudish taste. He judges the poet as not reaching the standard set out in the poetry:

He [the poet--the first edition was published anonymously] furnishes a severe standard for the estimate of his own productions. His Leaves of Grass are doubtless intended as an illustration of the natural poet. They are certainly original in their external form, have been shaped on no pre-existent model out of the author's own brain. Indeed, his independence often becomes coarse and defiant. His language is too frequently reckless and indecent though this appears to arise from a naive unconsciousness rather than from an impure mind. His words might have passed between Adam and Eve in Paradise, before the want of fig-leaves brought no shame; but they are quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society, and will justly prevent his volume from free circulation in scrupulous circles. With these glaring faults, the Leaves of Grass are not destitute of peculiar poetic merits, which will awaken an interest in the lovers of literary curiosities. They are full of bold, stirring thoughts—with occasional passages of effective description, betraying a genuine intimacy with Nature and a keen appreciation of beauty—often presenting a rare felicity of diction, but so disfigured with eccentric fancies as to prevent a consecutive perusal without offense, though no impartial reader can fail to be impressed with the vigor and quaint beauty of isolated portions.

Dana concludes that a perceptive reader of Leaves of Grass "will discern much of the essential spirit of poetry beneath an uncouth and grotesque embodiment."

I like to think Whitman would have embraced this sentiment, even if he himself disagreed with it.

Back to Whitman: I Sit Content

I have written much recently, but not of Walt Whitman. So, let me step back and bring in Page 26 of the 1855 Leaves of Grass:

I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair,
And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

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.

And I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
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 see that the elementary laws never apologize,
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

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,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the body,
And I am the poet of the soul.

The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself . . . . the latter I translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only developement.

The language on this page is extraordinary: "pried through the strata," "the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow," "My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite."

The word "I" appears most of any single word. "I know" and "I am" expressions each appear 6 times. To me, the highlight of this page in when the I, the know, and the am, are all brought together with concepts of awareness, sitting, and contentment:

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,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

I like the how the poet is now sitting, as opposed to the leaning and loafing in the beginning of the poem.

Whitman's poet, as always, is audacious and presumptive. The poetry lives out the sentiments that Percy Bysshe Shelley had written only about 30 or so years before:

It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

I Sound Triumphal

Too long have I stayed away from Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Grass. We are now on page 25, where the poet has just picked up a kind of praise for the defeated:

I sound triumphal drums for the dead . . . . I fling through my embouchures the loudest and gayest music to them,
Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war- vessels sank in the sea, and those themselves who sank in the sea,
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes, and the number-less unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known.

Is this not a quintessentially American sentiment, to gaze lovingly and sympathetically on the fallen? Americans are fascinated by the defeated and by the underdogs. The poet here continues to dig in American soil with not (just) a nationalist's but a completist's fervor.

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 will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The keptwoman and sponger and thief are hereby invited . . . . the heavy-lipped slave is invited . . . . the venerealee is invited,
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand . . . . this is the float and odor of hair,
This is the touch of my lips to yours . . . . this is the murmur of yearning,
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This is the thoughtful merge of myself and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have . . . . for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.

We realize that we had been in one of the poet's characteristic interludes, as the he brings back several "this is" statements. This type of statement is already a staple of the poem; it has both an indicative and self-referential purpose, as the poet looks out to the world and defines his own poem as being or creating both the world and its affects. The litany above continues the thread of the defeated and unloved.

Whitman's poet shows himself repeatedly to be concerned above all with continuum, "the thoughtful merge of myself and the outlet again": continuum and recursion and reflection. And then...the poet toggles to intimacy:

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? or the early redstart twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.

The poet talks to me, alone, now, in private and in trust of camaraderie. And then...the confidence is interrupted:

Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude?
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

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.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids . . . . conformity goes to the fourth-removed,
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out.

Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious?

I think we have the poet here bringing us out from the realm of the defeated to one of the unabashed. The poet is at home in both lands, and in all lands.

Song of Victory

I have not posted for some time on Walt Whitman. Last entry dealt with page 23, and the bottom of the page saw the poet beginning a new pattern:

A southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable,
A Yankee bound my own way . . . . ready for trade . . . . my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin leggings,
A boatman over the lakes or bays or along coasts . . . . a Hoosier, a Badger, a Buckeye,
A Louisianian or Georgian, a poke-easy from sandhills and pines,
At home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off New-foundland,
At home in the fleet of iceboats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians . . . . comrade of free northwesterners, loving their big proportions,

Pattern 1: A Yankee/Kentuckian/boatman/Louisianian or Georgian. Pattern 2: At home in X.

Pattern 3 starts with "Comrade," and we pick this up on page 24:

Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen—comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest,
A novice beginning experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and trade and rank, of every caste and religion,
Not merely of the New World but of Africa Europe or Asia . . . . a wandering savage,
A farmer, mechanic, or artist . . . . a gentleman, sailor, lover or quaker,
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician or priest.

Remember that we started all these patterns with the poet's overarching declaration, "I am." Leaves of Grass holds so much interest from 1855 through today for being restless and relentless in attempting to define the self. Define yet not contain, for the self--the multiple, omnipresent self--cannot be imprisoned:

I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

I hear Whitman's poet singing a particular note of defiance in "am not stuck up, and am in my place." This is a defiance of people, a resistance to accepting the slurs of people or their admonishments for the poet to mind his place. To these people, the poet rejoins:

The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

Indeed, the poet doesn't just make a defensive argument or a positive case. He actually just demolishes the whole reason for the original question of place:

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.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.

This is the breath of laws and songs and behaviour,
This is the the tasteless water of souls . . . . this is the true sustenance,
It is for the illiterate . . . . it is for the judges of the supreme court . . . . it is for the federal capitol and the state capitols,
It is for the admirable communes of literary men and composers and singers and lecturers and engineers and savans,
It is for the endless races of working people and farmers and seamen.

The poet returns to patterns and repetition. And the page finishes as a song of victory begins:

This is the trill of a thousand clear cornets and scream of the octave flute and strike of triangles.

I play not a march for victors only . . . . I play great marches for conquered and slain persons.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall . . . . battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Every Single One, One

Page 23 continues the long litany of personages brought out by our poet.

On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose change,
The floormen are laying the floor—the tinners are tinning the roof—the masons are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered . . . . it is the Fourth of July . . . . what salutes of cannon and small arms!
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs and the mower mows and the wintergrain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pikefisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
The flatboatmen make fast toward dusk near the cottonwood or pekantrees,
The coon-seekers go now through the regions of the Red river, or through those drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
The torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons around them,
In walls of adobe, in canvass tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport.
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time . . . . the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.

We get individuals (a Missourian, an old husband) and more often we get groups (five friendly matrons, a crew, the city, the living).

From the patriarchs at summer to the city at sleep, we seem to have come to the end of a day, an American day. Sleep intimates death, but all repose “for their time,” a phase that hints at each having a pre-allotted portion. If not a divine allotment, maybe the phrase suggests a human entitlement.

The poet concludes the litany of personages by bringing them into the self. Bringing reciprocates in giving, and the poet declares we are all avatars of one another, “more or less.”

The poet launches out on another litany. If the first, the one just concluded, concentrated on roles and work and the day, the second seems to toss anchors on place.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful 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,
One of the great nation, the nation of many nations— the smallest the same and the largest the same,
A southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable,
A Yankee bound my own way . . . . ready for trade . . . . my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin leggings,
A boatman over the lakes or bays or along coasts . . . . a Hoosier, a Badger, a Buckeye,
A Louisianian or Georgian, a poke-easy from sandhills and pines,
At home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off New-foundland,
At home in the fleet of iceboats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians . . . . comrade of free northwesterners, loving their big proportions,

The poet renders each placed person in a larger scheme of e pluribus unum, “out of many, one.” The poet’s nation is old and young, maternal and paternal, southerner and Yankee. The poet never forgets the many, the individuality of the many--this element never becomes subsumed into banal oneness, nationality, or patriotism.

In the poet’s reckoning of them, these placed people congregate and constellate around the idea of being “at home.” Each one belongs at the place, in that environment, and immersed in that climate.

More importantly, perhaps, the poet belongs there. The poet belongs in all of those places, but more importantly in each of them. The poet identifies the poet as comrade to the people and the places of the nation, to every single one.

Every single one. Whitman’s poet lives at this highly granular level, sweeping yet extraordinarily delicate and fine. The poet collects people, places, work, and images one at a time. The poet collects and builds from each one, weaving a pattern that connects a startling geographic and temperamental diversity.

America Is People

If you are wondering, yes, my title makes a joking allusion to Soylent Green.

Any-who, we are on Page 22 of Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Grass. The whole page concerns people, Americans. The poet observes and describes them:

The young fellow drives the express-wagon . . . . I love him though I do not know him;
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young . . . . some lean on their rifles some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position and levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
The woollypates hoe in the sugarfield, the overseer views them from his saddle;
The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the well-riddled target,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and beadbags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with halfshut eyes bent sideways,
The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shoregoing passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein, the elder sister winds it off in a ball and stops now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child,
The cleanhaired Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill,
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are ad-vancing;
The pavingman leans on his twohanded rammer—the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the notebook—the signpainter is lettering with red and gold,
The canal-boy trots on the towpath—the bookkeeper counts at his desk—the shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
The child is baptised—the convert is making the first professions,
The regatta is spread on the bay . . . . how the white sails sparkle!
The drover watches his drove, he sings out to them that would stray,
The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back—the purchaser higgles about the odd cent,
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly,
The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,)
The President holds a cabinet council, he is surrounded by the great secretaries,

The list actually began on the previous page, where the poet talked of Me-ness (for lack of a better term):

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,
Scattering it freely forever.

The list of people is, I think, an expression of the variety of Me. It is the poet scattering the self, the poet giving the self.

On Page 22, I don't know that I discern a pattern necessarily, but the juxtaposition of some lines seems deliberately provocative in some instances: the dancing gentlemen and the youth, the Wolverine and the reformer, the squaw and the connoisseur, the prostitute and the President.

The poet expresses love, affinity, or alliance with some of the people. The poet's stand with the prostitute is most remarkable, a moral condemnation of the crowd's behavior and a powerful declaration of allegiance. The reflection of the prostitute and her crowd in the President and his cabinet council is political, personal, and human commentary.

Ya-honk!

Page 21 of the 1855 Leaves of Grass begins with one of the best words ever: Ya-honk!

Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.

Of course, the ya-honk sound is a single wild gander leading his flock in the night. Perhaps our wild gander is a figure of the poet. In any case, the poet takes the sound as an invitation to find meaning. That meaning is found suspended in the earth's heavens. The poet's attention moves to other creatures, as if we were considering an American bestiary. The poet claims to recognize something common in all these animals and himself, a "same old law." I suppose this law is consecrated by its age, but what is this law?

The poet seems not to say, but moves on.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamoured of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,
Scattering it freely forever.

We seem to oscillate between the sky of the gander and the earth of the working animals. I have mentioned before the poet's fondness for work for the body immersed in environment and working. The poet settles on the "Me" on the working, opportunistic Me. Goodness and connectedness are located in commonality of the Me, in the Me's relatively low value in another economy.

Now, it seems, the poet relates several variations of the occupied Me, the Me in and of work:

The pure contralto sings in the organloft,
The carpenter dresses his plank . . . . the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,
He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand . . . . the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves . . . . the policeman travels his beat . . . . the gate-keeper marks who pass,

This is the poet scattering the Me freely. This is the Me as it gets spent in America, the investment made in hopes of a vast return. The poet's litany speaks of variety and difference, yet we still have the question of the "same old law" unresolved as the Me-list gets unfolded.

We Live in/and Work

I have been away from the ol' blog and ol' Whitman since the end of July. Let's see if I can pick up things again.

On page 20 of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, we conclude what I'll call the swimming hole episode of the poem. It's, well, the climax of the episode, with a lonely woman mysteriously unobserved as she swims among the young men-folk:

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun . . . . they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

The poet then visits a butcher-boy and some balcksmiths:

The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge . . . . they are all out . . . . there is a great heat in the fire.

From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers roll—overhand so slow—overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

That "or" at the top of the line fascinates me. Whitman's poet, the conjunction reminds us, is a conjurer or is perhaps straining to see the poetic vision. The scenes we get are not simply given. They are not just "there." The poet works as surely as the subjects in/of the poem work. As readers, our role is seemingly to follow the poet's labor as the poet follows the labor of others. Each following provides a lesson, a feature of living worth admiration and note.

The poet keeps us thinking about the work itself as well as the active bodies performing the work:

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses . . . . the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain,
The negro that drives the huge dray of the stoneyard . . . . steady and tall he stands poised on one leg on the stringpiece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hipband,
His glance is calm and commanding . . . . he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache . . . . falls on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him . . . . and I do not stop there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving . . . . backward as well as forward slueing,
To niches aside and junior bending.

Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

The body at work is vitally expressive for Whitman. Poetry--"in me," in the poet--moves too, swerves too. Poetry is a "caresser of life," or perhaps a deity is meant here. But it is the body, the conjured body that acts, which makes value.

Come to the end of the page and we're contemplating animals. We've seen horses and oxen. Now, we see birds:

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and daylong ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
. . . . I believe in those winged purposes,
And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,
And consider the green and violet and the tufted crown intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

The striking line is "I believe in those winged purposes." What can be meant here? Does it relate to the "intentional" crown of the birds' heads? Is the poet talking about a designed and ordered world, a world in the guiding hands of God? Do the ellipses preceding the assertion of belief signify a gathering certainty or a moment of doubt?

By the end of this page, the poet has brought us back to a sense of grandeur and urgency. These expressions, these labors, are not just beautiful and mighty. They are terrible and serious also.

As readers, we are never allowed by the poet to get lost, although we may get immersed. We must ever recall our purposes and fulfill the roles we can. We will not "call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else," and we will not reject our role as reader because it is not another one--the role of poet, for example. In other words, we will accept our role for what it is, for what doing it allows us to express.

Get (in) the Picture

[Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Walt Whitman, 1887-8.]

Page 19 of Leaves of Grass begins by continuing the portrait of a wedding. The full section, beginning on page 18, reads as follows:

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far-west . . . . the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat nearby crosslegged and dumbly smoking . . . . they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper . . . . he was dressed mostly in skins . . . . his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck,
One hand rested on his rifle . . . . the other hand held firmly the wrist of the red girl,
She had long eyelashes . . . . her head was bare . . . . her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet.

The juxtaposition of the trapper's hands on a rifle and then the bride's wrist is slightly troubling. The scene seems hard and natural in a rather brutal sense, not like the shows of ostentatious romanticism we might normally associate with American weddings. The lounging trapper recalls the loafing, leaning poet. Hair has an interesting role here, the beard of the trapper and the locks of the girl: full hair, associated with luxury and sexual appeal.

The next scene involves a runaway slave come to the door:

The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet,
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table . . . . my firelock leaned in the corner.

This fraternity in the scene, the hospitality described, contrasts with the wedding scene, where the girl's father and friends silently keep distance.That family is covered while the scene here involves openness, invitation, and intimacy--such an ironic reversal of the marriage!

Then, suddenly, we enter a scene of the twenty-eight young men and the 28-year-old woman. We engage a narrative roiling together the preceding themes of sociability, intimacy, openness, voluptuousness--and hair, skin, bareness, and touch:

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly,
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

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

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams passed all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

These famous lines shocked me maybe 20 years ago. Surely, readers in 1855 must also have been surprised at the forthright vision of bodies at play, bodies in desire.

[Thomas Eakins, The Swimming Hole, 1884-5.]

At least one contemporary was impressed by Whitman's verbal portraits, American Painter Thomas Eakins:

Eakins’s ideas about the human body find an interesting parallel in the poetry of Walt Whitman, and indeed, they may have been acquired from Whitman, at least to a degree. This attachment to Whitman survives from the records of Eakins’s students—they called themselves “the Whitmans.” Eakins admired Walt Whitman tremendously. He painted Whitman’s portrait and developed a rapport with the poet, and Whitman appreciated Eakins extraordinary vision–calling on him to speak at a testimonial dinner and then remembering that Eakins did his speaking through a medium other than words. Eakins was particularly taken by the Song of Myself. The painting The Swimming Hole seems unmistakably inspired by the passage quoted above from it, and Eakins himself, referring to it as one of “his Whitmans,” would support this reading. It’s a remarkable example of a poem realized in oil and canvas.

Notice that Eakins, like Whitman, inserts (an avatar of) himself into the scene. I think of the poem and the painting together as examples of keen observers and communicators striving to realize both life and thinking in art.

Being There

On Page 18 Whitman continues his argument on the ubiquity of the poet, on the great scope of the poet's eye, and on the connectedness of this teeming American life...and death.

Earlier, Whitman had shown us a suicide, but now he pans across an American mob:

The blab of the pave . . . . the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles and talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and pelts of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites . . . . the fury of roused mobs,
The flap of the curtained litter—the sick man inside, borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd—the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
The souls moving along . . . . are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is visible?
What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall on the flags sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here . . . . what howls restrained by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the resonance of them . . . . I come again and again.

Although I used the word "pans," the visual metaphor is not quite right because Whitman draws in sounds and the feeling of vibrations also. Whitman then moves us away from the crowd and immerses us in a country scene:

The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow:
I am there . . . . I help . . . . I came stretched atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts . . . . one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the crossbeams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.

How easy we've made this transition! How powerful the contrast between that tension before and the reposition now.

Next, we'll ascend mountains, view the sea, and return to a sense of the social:

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game,
Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.
The Yankee clipper is under her three skysails . . . . she cuts the sparkle and scud,
My eyes settle the land . . . . I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.

The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me,
I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time,
You should have been with us that day round the chowder- kettle.

On this page, Whitman stresses "being there"--being amid the din of the market, being out by the country barn, being in the mountain woods as a solitary hunter, being with mates by the chowder kettle. He dips us in the environments of the page with simple impressions. He invite us, cajoles us, and intimates that not to leap in ourselves is to miss out on a "good time."

Whitman's Cosmos

Page 17 of the 1855 edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass: this is a shocking and grand page of a shocking and grand poetic statement. We had finished page 16 with perception, both sight and sound. We left there with ideas that people had reason to speak, that people spoke from out of the depth of their desire to be know and to be available to the universe.

On the new page, we enter to thoughts of the great void, the question where are those who had come before:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

Whitman's declares them well and as part of all the cosmos, part of it physically and temporally:

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Whitman moves easily from the massive to the minute and back again endlessly. His vision constantly oscillates. He returns to the theme of knowledge, of sharing knowledge.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . . . . and am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself;
They do not know how immortal, but I know.

Every kind for itself and its own . . . . for me mine male and female,
For me all that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweetheart and the old maid . . . . for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

The poet here sings that he is everything and that everything is him. He speaks for it all, for all people and all experience. He champions unification, a sort of utopic or Edenic vision:

Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape . . . . you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless . . . . and can never be shaken away.

The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
The youngster and the redfaced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

But don't think that the poet is all sunshine, light and butterflies. We leave this sprawling page with a curious image

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom.
It is so . . . . I witnessed the corpse . . . . there the pistol had fallen.

This image is connected to the little infant, the youngster, and the red-faced girl. They all participate in lucky life and death, in the goodness of death and life.

What Is the Grass?

Since I only have time today for a quick post, I'll let Walt do most of the talking/singing:

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?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child . . . . the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

Thought leads to thought leads to thought.

The Company of Your Voice

I hope people like this journey through Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I think it's refreshing to hear Whitman's voice, to accept the prompts of his poetry, and thereby to think these thoughts.

We pick up on page 15:

As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the peep of the day,
And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?

These are difficult lines. Whitman has us exploring ideas of intimacy and bounty. He has us thinking through a rather weighty decision: do we look down the road and out in the open or do we instead focus on counting beans and creating inventories?

Of course, we decide to not to postpone the "acceptation and realization." We take up the charge to see and to search for "the Me myself":

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looks with its sidecurved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.

Whitman here seems to distinguish the working Me--the laboring We--from what I guess we can call the poetic Me. The word "poetic" is full of meaning, as I think Whitman wants us to understand this reflective, descriptive, and beautiful Me as both the object and subject of these pages. But Whitman is remarkable for never succumbing to exclusion. The laborer and the poet are intimate and mutually reinforcing:

I believe in you my soul . . . . the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

I take "the other I am" to refer to the working Me, and I think the soul must be the seat of poetry. Perhaps it's the working Me, another name and a symbol for the reader, that the poet then addresses directly:

Loafe with me on the grass . . . . loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want . . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

There's humility here and simplicity. The poet asks only for company and for the sound of a voice. And yet even this sound is momentous. Even the sound gives and teaches. In Whitman's world, everything images everything else:

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that 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;
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and pokeweed.

Lacking Nothing

The next page (page 14) of Whitman's poetry starts with the poet not declaiming but questioning. The poet addresses the reader, challenges the reader, prods the reader, puzzles the reader.

Your thousand acres are pretty good, the poet's reasoning seems to be, and the Earth is pretty good, too. You may have felt pride in your ruminations over other poems...but now you are here with me in this poem. With me and herein, you the reader will not get at the meaning of poem but you will actually get the source of them all!

I have mentioned before my admiration for Whitman's audacity. His claims for what his poem is, what his ends are--these are audacious if anything is. And his style is no less confident and muscular. Look at all of the anaphora (Have you, You shall, Always), the repetition, and the ellipses. Notice the range: we began the page with acres and Earth; we leave it with organs, particles, and inches.

A final note must be made to acknowledge the great openness that Whitman champions: "Clear and sweet is my soul....and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul." He accepts all and rejects nothing. He embraces it all; it's all his subject and it's all essential: "Lack one lacks both."

Our Song

Many years ago--I am going to guess 1989--I first encountered these lines:

I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

When as a younger man I first read this bold opening, I knew the poem as "Song of Myself." This title is not found here; it would be a later addition. But here in our fresh reading of a fresh poet newly reaching out, the audacious three lines have the poet yanking the reader into Whitman's way of seeing. In what you read, Whitman seems to say, you will understand as I do and you will therefore recognize your own understanding too.

I hope I can convey how outrageous Whitman truly is in this opening. He gives the reader not just words or ideas to ponder but rather claims that the reader will become connected or re-connected to an overarching good that joins poet and reader alike. Whitman thus gives both a new way of seeing and a new metaphysics supporting the vision. It's heady stuff, stated with simplicity and poise.

I can hardly fathom the line "what I assume you shall assume" because of the strange verb "to assume." The verbs seems to have both the intellectual sense--as in taking something to be true--and the active sense--as in taking control of or adopting. Poet and reader get locked into a shared sight and a shared mind. I wonder if perhaps Whitman's intent is to teach the reader about self-celebration and self-realization, to show them the American-ness of their sight and their being. Whitman's song is our song, one of the person, the individual, and the American. 

Over the course of the page, Whitman's words then begin to weave a reverie. First it seems we are by a house, standing and leaning casually, and watching the grass in the summer--yet it's a single blade of grass. The individuality of it is striking. Whitman really is concerned with atoms, with the atom level.

Whitman contrasts the perfumed air of the house with the odorless atmosphere. By this quick, impassioned contrast, Whitman declares allegiance to natural, to himself as a natural being with a nature to be explored and appreciated.

We conclude the page with health and song. This is an awakening.