A Thread for thoughts on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” - I will be making a comment each week after noting the corresponding verse from this early modern classic of American poetry in my regular Friday posts. This is a riff on the University of Iowa’s WhitmanWeb project, which provided commentary for each of the 52 verses, and a user forum.
I’ve picked up a copy of Mark Edmundson’s “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy” and I may occasionally post a relevant excerpt or question. Edmundson “finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday. Song of Myself does this, setting the terms for democratic identity and culture in America.”
I can think of few more important aspirations at the crossroads our world faces in the coming year than to try to find connection and consensus. I’m calling this an exercise in: “If you want to change the world, start with yourself.”
Sort comments by “New First” for most recent week’s notes.
I'm very sorry to report that the University of Iowa's WhitmanWeb commentary on "Song of Myself" has become unavailable online - I'm not sure if by oversight or intentional - and it looks like I'm going to have to buy the book published by U of Iowa Press to have access to the invaluable insights of Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill. No big whoop, but for the present, I'm putting this all on hold.
I've been contemplating rebooting this as a different kind of project, possibly a collection of essays about the themes of the poem. I'd be very open to collaboration if anyone were interested - let me know. In the meantime, many thanks to you few stalwart souls who popped in to comment. 🤍🤍🤍
I'm immediately struck by the first line of this weeks' verse: "This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger..." It reminds me so much - and I think intentionally invokes - the words of Jesus: "This is my body. This is my blood." And as with Jesus, now Walt is invoking the democracy of his own table, in which all - without exception - are welcome.
I can't remember where I read it, it was many years ago but it's stuck with me, this very simple sort of understanding: we are all one - the number 1, that is - each and all of us, and no 1 is greater than any other. I'm reminded of this any time I experience a moment when someone thinks themself better than someone else. And this doesn't just apply to accidents of birth, to economic or geographic luck, but also to acts - there is a profound way in which even the most monstrous of us is equally (and I really wish I had a better way of saying) "a child of God." That might be he part that's hardest to wrap our thoughts around, because not many will argue that a murderer, a torturer, a monster is the equal of a saint, an innocent, or a hero, except, I think, perhaps in the way that we ourselves can act toward every other living thing - with compassion, with goodwill, with an attempt to understand that their brains may be different, their lives may have been hard, they may never have been taught empathy - their life and their viewpoint may have been warped by fire and fist.
I have this feeling that in Walt's word "astonish" here - when he asks if he astonishes, the same as sunlight, or birdsong - that he is invoking the "ecstasy" of divine love. In a lot of ways, I feel like we are able to feel this in every moment our lives - very different from euphoria, and often obscured by habituation and familiarity - but nevertheless, if at any given moment of our lives we were suddenly struck with a profound newness and fresh eyes - just arrived from another dimension, another planet, another mode of being - even the very smallest of details and sensations would be a kind of ecstasy - astonishing - and perhaps we can regain that if we also remember that these workaday moments will someday no longer be ours.
Here's the text of Lanston Hughes poem, mentioned in the U of Iowa's page for this verse:
This was one of my more favorite passages, and glad I "ended" on this note. It's not an end, actually, I've been thinking about publishing a book of essays on the poem and its themes for a little while, though I would love some collaborators. (hint hint) ;)
I'm reminded of the story in which Buddha tells the woman who cannot accept her child's death that she should find a mustard seed from a house where no one has died or lost a loved one, and of course, she cannot find such a place. We are more united in our grief and our loss than in our victory, although as a culture, we spend far more time telling stories of the victorious. Maybe it's because we erase the stories of the vanquished? Maybe because the history books were written by and for the victors, while everyone else was too busy trying to make do and survive?
One of the reasons I always had such a hard time with fantasy fiction - even though it was my first love and I spent decades trying to write it - and even a lot of the general fiction is the preponderance of tales about kings, queens, princes/ses, heroes and sorcerers - everything gets boiled down to enormous goods and abject evils, and the story generally goes the same way: "happily ever after."
But are these stories about us and how we live? Or an escape from a zero-sum game?
Walt's trying to redirect our attention away from the parades and the pageantry of victory, to remember that there is bravery and courage, hope and anguish from every angle, and there is richness to be found in everyone's experience.
I love this so much and hope you do continue this project. Much of the writing I want to do is in this realm. part of what has stopped me from starting my memoir is that my story does not necessarily end in "happily ever after all the struggle"... but is a mixody of all the "enormous goods and abject evils," the torturous moments as well as the peak experiences that do not necessarily end up in the place we are all trained to hope that it does. Yet NO MATTER WHAT: "there is bravery and courage, hope and anguish from every angle, and there is richness to be found in everyone's experience" and story.
Start a Substack. Set a schedule. Stick to it. Lots of people have written serial memoirs on here, and having a deadline - whether weekly, or monthly - helps get over perfectionism: you push the "Publish" button whether it's perfect or not. Thanks for stopping by Julia. :)
I'm wondering why this week's verse states things in the negative.
"If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or 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."
In the first line he says all of the thoughts he's expressed so far are universal, everyone everywhere in all times, but rather than become fulsome and praising, Walt seems to couch his summation in a kind of rebuke: if these thoughts are particular to you but bear no power over me - if ideas are not about the Big Things and figuring them out - if you don't feel them but just see them (or worse, shut your eyes to them,) they are worthless, or at least very unimportant.
And there's something to that, I suppose - I've often thought that in our drive for "survival" we get lost in the weeds, the picayune details, the me-me-woe-is-me pity party which in much of Western society is not really so much a question of survival but of status, and must look pretty ridiculous to the vast portion of humanity which does indeed fight for survival on a daily basis. (I will never forget the time a wealthy woman sat in a chair in our showroom and actually burst into tears because, God as my witness, she was going to have to drive to Tahoe for a ski weekend because her husband's jet was undergoing maintenance.)
Anyway, it seems to me that Walt gives us the measure of our attention and concern, the things that really are important: "This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe." It's in the things we share (or refuse to share) - the things we have in common, the most basic needs of all life on earth, and our field of shimmering grass which if you ask me, is a far more beautiful metaphor than ashes to ashes, or dust to dust.
Interestingly, the first part of the Genesis 3:19 from which the ashes and the dust derives, says: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken..." And what is bread but the fruit of grasses?
So I've said before that I don't feel like I'm especially lyrical in my writing - oh sure, I can turn a phrase, and I have a sharp eye for wit and wry humor - to each their own, and I suppose that if this verse is saying anything it's that we each have our own view, our own talents, our own place, and each of these is just another expression of a sort of Oversoul from which we all spring and to which we all return. But I gotta say that some of the commentary from the U of Iowa - this week by a "CM" in the Afterward - is really rather beautiful.
"For every bright sun that lights the sky there are innumerable dark suns, in galaxies near and far, around which we orbit unaware, now brushing up against someone or something with the key to a room in which the miraculous may reside, now veering off in another direction for reasons that mystify. That we do not always know why we do the things we do reminds us that we are caught up in the mysterious currents flowing through the universe, the sea charted in “Song of Myself,” and here we learn that the ship we boarded at the beginning of time is named Diversity." - CM
I'm reminded of a time when Diversity first struck me - it was at the pride parade in San Francisco, and it might have even been a member of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) who always got the biggest cheers, bless their huge and loving hearts - and the sign read "Difference Enriches Us All" - which is just another word for diversity, and I thought, you know what, that's right, how boring would it be if everyone were the same, if we didn't have the bumper cars of life bonking around in joyous new combinations but just some lockstep of sameness, ugh. So here we have an expression of those "mysterious currents" in Walt's "farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest." Fancy-man? I think he means me.
I love this line especially: "The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place." There's a yin/yang to this - his dark suns and his impalpable, which I might call the unknowable-not-now, the "abyss" with its dragons which I've actually never really thought of as a frightening thing, but one of adventure. I think this verse is proclaiming himself, and inviting us, to think of ourselves - all of us - as adventurers, fellow travelers.
😂 I think you're the fancy man too. Lol. I really resonated with the whole first part of this verse. Over the last few months, I've begun a practice of trying to include AS me all that I experience and I've been doing this by envisioning pulling the experience in for a hug until we sort of dissolve into one another. But then I was a little stumped by the idea of everything in its place. Maybe I'm getting too hung up on the metaphysics. I really loved this quote in the foreward (the name of the writer escapes me): "...testing how wide he can expand his sympathetic impulse before the self dissipates, and then he contracts back into a firm sense of self, expressing confidence that he can contain the multitudes he has absorbed, that they in fact strengthen the self." This feels like the ultimate dance of self and other.
😘 I love that, dissolving the boundaries between self and experience - it reminds me of another comment somewheres around here about how we have direct evidence that the universe is sentient, intelligent and loving to the exact extent that we can recognize it in ourselves - we are part of the universe, after all... Thanks Jenna!!
I will confess that I have not yet made the time to really, slowly read and linger over each of the offerings in this week's verse, the second-longest in the poem. I will also confess that the technique, in fiction, often leaves me a little cold - I want to say I put down a book one time (I won't say who but they are on Substack) because there was just one too many catalogs of things, and I found it, if not lazy, at least not as "lyrical" as I imagined they thought it was. In any event, I've been super-duper busy busy reading for the BookLife Prize - 5 books/half a million words in 11 days (yes, I skim a bit) - and I haven't made the time.
But isn't that the puzzle of our lives, that Walt himself was trying to bring to our attention? Not so much that we don't have the time (usually) but that we don't make the time (often) for the things that really matter. My bad.
I'm going to call out three lines in the middle of these 75 which the U of Iowa foreword pointed out -
"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)" -
and note the commentary: "It is as if Whitman, in this catalogue of American life, is absorbing everything, accepting the nation’s wild diversity, pausing to reject just one thing: discrimination itself."
I have to say, I really love that; there was a time not so long ago when in the midst of my drinking, yes, I made a fool of myself, and people were unkind and disrespectful, and I felt enormous shame over it. This moment of compassion by Walt really moves me, and is a model to me for how to see people who have lost their way and may not know how to get back on track - thank god I did get sober, and can now pay the kindness back.
ALSO - I went and bought what I thought was a biography of Whitman, to supplement my understanding of the man and his milieu - "Walt Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative: The Pulitzer-Prize Winning Biography" by Emory Hollway Jr. A narrative? Yeah, whatever, that's cool. Published in 2022 it said; Pulitzer Prize it said.
Things started going sideways almost immediately when I found myself having to read the same sentences three times just to figure out what they were saying (and not always successfully.) Florid? You betcha. Verbose? Holy shit. Archaic? Um yeah. What the fuck was going on?
And then I came upon a passage where the author referred to milk cows as "milch" cows, and I was like, what the fuck is a milch cow?? So I looked it up, and it said it's just another word for milk, derived from Middle English! What the hell? What nut would use milch instead of milk in this day and age, ferchrissake?
Turns out, Mr. Hollway Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography was published in 1926! And won the Pultizer in 1927!! Ah ha. And by the way, he's got none too many positive words, and all very veiled and circumspect, about the gay elephant in the room, so at this point I'm going to just finish it out as a soporific before bed, and then find myself (hopefully) a more clear, modern and accepting biography. I'll keep you posted...
I love this quote from the commentary by Ed Folsom of U of Iowa:
"Most of us spend our lives devoted to the distant and the abstract, only to recognize too late that the miracles all around us all the time are what we have deadened ourselves to. In this section, Whitman offers his most radical statement of democratic identity: “What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.” This is the poet’s credo: he will discover himself not in the exotic, the faraway, the difficult, or the costly, but rather in the common people he encounters every day and the animals that inhabit and enliven his world."
How many times have I said that I'm tired of stories about super heroes, kings and queens, spies and magicians and stars? (Too many, if you ask my husband.) For so many years, I wrapped myself in a cocoon of escapism, trying to write fantasy stories that ultimately boiled down to hyper-stylized battles between ultimate good and evil. But I didn't really find my voice until I started writing about realistic people and events, the everyday moments, and small victories and defeats. How often has your darling said something so funny you've wished other people could have heard it? Must there be a studio audience to realize how precious and adorable your loved one is, or how courageous in the face of the trials we all inevitably face?
I think that's what this week's verse really urges so clearly: not holding out for heroes and riches, but finding the wealth of experience all around us, every day; not demanding that life supply us meaning (or else we'll declare it a meaningless vacuum) but opening ourselves to the riches the world lays at our feet every moment of our lives.
I love this line from the UofIowa's analysis this week: "This self-identification of the poet with the black dray-driver is another step toward a democratic way of thinking, as the poet becomes a caresser of all life (“not a person or object missing”), absorbing everyone and everything into his non-discriminating and always-expanding self."
I was just telling Kim Warner in our recorded conversation this week (post on Wednesday!) that I had a sort of epiphany, recently, about a kind of "witnessing" urge I've been having - and now of course I realize that it comes from Walt, and I suppose I don't feel any less enthralled that he is the source, but humble and grateful. It's this feeling that I can keep my eyes and ears open, and my mouth shut - that I can accept everyone on their own terms, and feel no need to categorize, to label or assess (and I suppose this includes me too - no more judging, no more fearing, no more less than.) And of course its within Song of Myself that this comes to me, so it's a sort of legacy from Uncle Walt I suppose.
And then there are the lines: "Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life." That's quite a statement! He goes further: "And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me."
And it's funny because I also told Kim that we don't find completion in our writing, but in our day-to-day lives - and this comes from Walt, too. And it's true, isn't it? In the eternal Now, there are no past achievements, no great accomplishments to raise our hats any higher than the heads on which they sit.
Is it possible that Walt really is seeping into my bones as we go? We're only on verse 13 of 52 - we still have 39 more to go! :)
I love this verse! To me, it was like in reading this one it finally clicked that a huge part of these animistic values, of including everything as the self, is noticing it all in the first place. Really paying attention. "Witnessing" as you said (I can't wait for your conversation with Kim, btw ❤️). I think my favorite line this week is: "I believe in those wing'd purposes". Something about that really brought Walt's democratic thinking to life for me; that whatever everything else is doing is just as important as what I'm doing. There is no hierarchy of purpose. And, Troy, I want to say THANK YOU for hosting this space. I got myself overwhelmedly busy the last couple weeks and then came back here today. This poem (and your reflections) are like a balm for my soul.
I'm so glad, Jenna, and delighted to have you here. 💛 It is funny how adding some wings on a thing gives it such great space, all of a sudden ;) I agree it feels like a great noticing, a survey of all creation, so to speak - and I know (since I read ahead a little) that what is coming is a reckoning of the divine after this marvelous display of worldly gifts.
From last week's play in the surf, and the gaze of the woman upon their bodies, we now have men at work, and Uncle Walt feasting his eyes on the "grimed and hairy chests" their lithe waists and massive arms of blacksmiths - dear me, is it possible WW's poetry was the erotic fiction of pre-Civil War America?
This is another one of those very short verses - the last one dealt with his childhood memory of a hayride on his family farm - but this one is all business, or is it?
On the one hand, I'm reminded of a slogan from certain rooms - "a worker among workers" - which is simply a reminder that we are part of a collective, and all have our parts to play - no one of us (despite many howls to the contrary) "superior" to any other.
The UofIowa's comment cites both the repetitive writing of words for writers, and a kind of flow state, where seemingly boring, repetitious work can lead us to intense embodiment. It just now occurs to me that one of the things that flow states often have in common is a kind of goal image, where the repetition melds with an imagined image of an endpoint, be it a performance, or a creation; in this case, the hammered creations of the forge that are the earliest and most basic kinds of technology that allowed humans to build the world around them.
I come back again and again to Walt's insistence that the divine is manifest in the body, that the soul and body are one, that every act is a holy act, including desire, looking, observing. Witnessing - that seems to be one of the big themes of this whole poem for me - I expect to see many more verses that remind us to treasure the here and now, the blood and sweat of work as much as the thrill and laughter of play. xo ~ MTF
I haven't said much about the obvious references to sex, esp. between men, that keep cropping up in SoM - I'm actually a little surprised that the poem received as much acclaim as it did, in that day, when it all seems so in your face - but maybe that's the modern me asserting that it is obvious, when a Victorian person might have no inkling of what was going on barely below the surface. So many references like "They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray" sprinkled everywhere - as a modern gay man, it doesn't seem so scandalous or titillating to me even if you read it loud and clear, though again, to a gay man at that time, it might have been incredibly thrilling to see even a veiled reference to men's bodies.
And speaking of men's bodies - the woman gazing, joining them in the water in her imagination - also seems to couch the act of looking at men in a palatable though still scandalous context - here, a woman takes the revolutionary action of looking and desiring men, and becomes the barely more acceptable stand-in for a man who looks at men.
There's a lot of "looking" in this poem, it seems to me - observing, wondering, witnessing - which in a way, was then - is still - perhaps a revolutionary act. So often we are encouraged to be the actors, to value action and certainty - a kind of arrogant "wholeness" - which does not admit to the need or desire to observe and assimilate new ways of thinking and seeing, but rather, to impose our way on others. Even our biggest "spectacles" - for example, American football - are not about creativity, but strategy, and the brute force of combat. "The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat." Uncle Walt is showing us another way.
I found it hard to draw as much meaning out of this verse as I have other ones, but what you said in your comment about looking and observing as opposed to doing really helped me make sense of things. You are a master interpreter, Troy :)
These last three verses seem to invoke WW's spirit of the body - the City, the Country, and this week, the Frontier (but also the sea which brought Europeans and Africans to these shores.) He's not dwelling in the subatomic realm with his atoms, but he is in the world of the imagination because he never went out West, never sailed, or met an escaped slave.
Lately I have found myself very hesitant to speak about the conditions of Native Americans and Black Americans - I just watched "Stamped from the Beginning" on Netflix and was shocked by some of what I learned, just as I have been shocked to see what appears to be the rise of racism in America but is really only the opening of my eyes to the horrors that already existed. I accept people's acknowledgement of ancestral lands - personally, I was born on the traditional territory and homelands of the Tongva and Tataaviuk people. I find myself looking and listening more, and speaking less.
Perhaps for Walt, at that time, speaking of imaginary scenarios where the mixing of races was illegal and perilous was the radical voice. But it does strike me that "my eyes settle the land" has a faint tinge of Manifest Destiny about it, and that the "Land" was not in need of "settling." It was a different time. I'm just going to abide with this verse.
Maybe because I read verse 9 and 10 back to back, but this one feels to me like more imaginings of a child...like the lives he lived through those books he mentioned in an earlier verse. And that these imaginary selves he's met through these literary adventures are also part of the self, just as the atoms of cow have become.
Absolutely! The imagination is a powerful enactment of a different kind of reality, with its own alchemy no less real than the material world. Thanks Jenna!
What spoke to me the most about this verse was the lightness of himself by being in the mountains— it felt like a straight up celebration of nature helping our peace of mind. :)
This is a funny little section, a throwback to Walt's early childhood on a farm on Long Island, and in keeping with my general habit of just letting the impressions pop out, this reminds me of the Shire in "Lord of the Rings." (Yes, I am a huge fan of Tolkien.) Specifically, it just reminds me of things I've read about Tolkien, how he was affected by WW1 (the movie "Tolkien" shows this beautifully) and longed for a return to a more pastoral existence that seems to have been lost forever - and as shown in the cacophony of city sounds and sights from the verse last week.
I have often wondered what the world would look like if the whole conquering-capitalism-colonial complex had never really taken off - if we'd all gone the way of the bonobos instead of the chimpanzees - and followed a generally more cooperative path than an adversarial one. This verse invokes that longing for a gentler acceptance, rather than an aggressive dominion, for me.
I had to laugh during my reading of this verse. Walt says he's there to help, but he's helpful in the way my son was so often helpful when there was work to be done. 🤗
I wasn’t sure what this verse was saying, but I did get a sense of playfulness. Reading your thoughts helped clarify it as I do feel the playfulness goes gentle acceptance more than aggressive dominion thing.
I'm going to start off this week's note with a note about the first two lines -
"The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand."
For some reason when I read that, and then read the 5th and 6th lines, I had it in my head that the baby was dead - it was only after I read the U of Iowa's Ed Folsom say it was sleeping did I realize that it was alive. But still I wonder: Why the gauze covering it like a shroud (or a sort of mosquito net, I guess)...? And why flies, which are traditionally associated with death and rot? I found it rather odd, and I still wonder if maybe WW is alluding to the emergence of life from death, which he's mentioned before, and bringing the full circle from the birth of the baby, to the lovers, to the suicide and death again.
There's a wonderful illustration by the artist James Christensen of an angel whispering "Mortua sum" which means "I am dead" in Latin, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for what "death" is, and often makes me think that the same place from which babies emerge is the place to which we return.
There's also the wonderful lyric from Sinéad O'connor's song "All Babies":
"All babies are born saying God's name
Over and over, all born singing God's name
All babies are flown from the universe
From there they're lifted by the hands of angels
God gives them the stars to use as ladders
She hears their calls, She is mother and father..." Anyway...
After these three couplets, there's fourteen lines cataloging all the sounds of the city, presumably his NYC, which run the gamut from the sounds of tires and footsteps, barkers and jokes, furious mobs and fights. It culminates with the third to the last line:
"What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum..."
According to Ed Folsom, this is the line which inspired Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" which has a whole catalog of its own exactly 100 years after, and is another one of the great American poems, by another homo, thank you very much.
I love how this sort of "movie" of sounds and images ends - "I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart" - another reference to the metaphor of the train passing through a view of mindfulness I've talked about before.
I though the same thing about the baby! And then I wondered if it was just a reflection of my having seen too many horror movies. Flies always mean there's a dead body around! I was kind of relieved to see you'd thought the baby was dead too. The overall feeling of Walt's time in the city is one of chaos and unpleasantness, but then he lets it pass or he passes. The part about the howls restrained by decorum is one that will stick with me for sure.
You know, although I find cities sometimes very chaotic and overwhelming, I guess not everybody does - go figure ;) So although starting this verse with that sort of apocalyptic image of birth/death/flies and sex and the suicide (Did you see Oppenheimer? The scene in the auditorium after he speaks where the woman cries and the people under the bleachers are having sex? Oy!) I'm keeping an open mind about whether he was actually trying to paint a sort of warning the way Ginsberg was with "Howl" or whether it's just the carnival of life. Thanks Jenna!!
I was taken by the line about the words vibrating. I felt like that was pointing too how words and ideas of the past echo forth to shape our current views. . . That was what grabbed me first anyways. :)
Yes! Thanks for pointing that out. It does feel like a wave of cause/effect from history on down, how words have shaped us, nations and the world. Well spotted, Michael! Thanks!
There are some great words in this verse - manifold, adjunct, immortal, fathomless - sometimes I find myself running to the dictionary to find precise definitions for words that I had only previously sort-of knew, but if asked what it means might stumble. "Manifold" for example, means many and various, also innumerable, but also, as a verb, to make a copy of - I'm reminded of the metaphor of grass that he has been using, how we are all "more alike than not" and it is our similarities which reinforce our shared humanity. "Adjunct" means supplementary to something else, or even subordinate - but here Walt refuses to admit that he is an adjunct to the earth, but rather, is the "mate" to humanity, in all its different stages and shapes and forms, none of which is "stale nor discarded." He insists that we are all immortal and fathomless, and that in a sense he holds us, each and every one of us, as part of himself.
I love the idea that we are all fathomless. How often have we though we understood someone, only to discover something about them later that completely upends our understanding? Or watch someone act so bravely (or so terribly) that again, we realize we don't really know anyone through and through, not even ourselves?
I think in this verse Walt is stepping beyond the known into the unknown, and in his tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and unshaken accceptance, every one of us is part of this fathomless, immortal manifestation of something bigger.
I'm reminded of all the systems we see nowadays - we've always had them but they seem to have proliferated like a hydra with the internet - systems which promise renewed youth, beauty, big muscles, silky hair, untold riches - we used to call it "snake oil" but now mostly just "content" and "marketing." Walt seems to always be looking past these things, beyond the quick fixes and the get rich quick schemes - no easy answers, just a greater comfort and acceptance of the important questions.
I love your comment here as much as I love the verse itself. My overall feeling when I read the verse was that I'd like to have known Walt. He's someone who really sees. In your last paragraph, when you write about him "looking past these things" it brings to mind a philosopher I've been learning about recently, Jean Gebser. He writes about the unfolding of human consciousness and how we are moving into what he calls the integral structure of consciousness (which is so in line with some of my own ideas). Gebser says that this integral structure of consciousness will be marked by transparency and the ability to 'see through'. This verse and your comment make me realize that Walt could 'see through' and in that lies some of his genius.
Oh that's so interesting, Jenna - I'd never heard of Jean Gebser but now I'm going to make a point of reading something about him; you're right, echoes so many things I've always sort of considered true but maybe didn't put words to. And I also wonder how, as a society, we come to consensus when some people want to insist on a more archaic or magical pov (to borrow his system designations) while others are using an integral view. So cool - thanks!
I love that line - “... it’s just as lucky to die”. That is such an interesting and different take from the norm. But it’s one I tend to agree with as living forever seems horrible and never being been seems equally a bummer.
I also really liked what you said: “we don’t really know anyone through and through” — I feel this way too and it can cause a sense of loneliness, but then it can also cause a sense of wonder and awe to try and know.
You're right, Michael - I think "immortality" would be a kind of hell - while I'm in no hurry to depart, when my time comes, I'll be ready for it. I remember thinking a long time ago that no matter what death is, it is not "worse" than life - but probably not automatically better either. Maybe just so different we cannot comprehend it, but also sometimes I think that whatever it is will cast the whole of life in a very different light than any understanding of it we think we have. 🤍🕊️👻
“.... sometimes I think that whatever it is will cast the whole of life in a very different light than any understanding of it we think we have.” — I love that, Troy. I feel the exact same way :)
I just love this verse of “Song of Myself” - it’s the first time Uncle Walt really tackles the question of the grass in the title of the book in which the poem appeared, Leaves of Grass, and he does so as though from the perspective of a child, as if he is both teacher but also comrade, equally unsure of the true nature of the grass, and only able to offer guesses about what it is, and what it means.
He starts by identifying it with himself, “the flag” of his character and being; and then with the Lord, as a sign and symbol of the mystery of divinity that we can wonder about; and then as a kind of child itself, the “babe of vegetation”—maybe of Mother Nature and the divine feminine?
But then he goes on to describe it as a “uniform hieroglyphic” which Mark Edmundsom in Song of Ourselves calls WW’s “central image for democracy.” It is everywhere, among all people, one of the most common sights wherever you are, and whoever. Edmundson goes on to describe the leaves of grass as more alike than different, and reaching its greatest glory in huge swaths, green in the spring when it is newborn, and the amber waves of grain in its maturity.
And finally Walt compares it to the “beautiful uncut hair of graves” and a number of passages in which grass is shown to spring forth from young people cut down in their prime, and old people—and then, he goes so far as to say “They are alive and well somewhere” which I find so beautiful and comforting. Mark Edmundson believes the next line is one of the most important of the poem: “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.”
This is all so rich with love for his fellow humans, and with the egalitarian, democratic spirit, where every one of us is equal to every other one, and that we can be both individuals, as well as a great people together.
I do sometimes feel like we have never really completed this cycle of democratic transformation, that we are more than ever caught up in the mercenary scramble to the top of the heap, lionizing those who have reached some theoretical pinnacle—usually by virtue of the number of dollar signs amassed rather than by the expansiveness of their character.
We have been watching this documentary on Netflix, “Alexander - The Making of a God” and I just want to let that sink in—that one of the oldest and “greatest” of our historical persons is remembered mainly for war, conquest and domination. It seems to me the vision Walt Whitman presents is one which transcends this model, and still holds greaestt promise for our future.
I love this verse too! It makes me think how much we've misunderstood Death. It makes me think, too, of the earlier verse that Edmunson made the remark about how the atoms that made up a cow yesterday have become us today. You probably know that most of my work is with the dead and I absolutely love the images Walt gives us here of their living, physical continuation through grass. I will never look at grass the same.
He really does give us so much rich imagery to ponder and meditate upon, and I feel an enormous amount of comfort from his expansive view of death. And the grass is just one of so many! Thanks Jenna!
While I really liked WW verse, especially the part about the smallest sprout, which feels so much like the whole circle of life thing — what I really liked what this paragraph from your comment, Troy:
“ I do sometimes feel like we have never really completed this cycle of democratic transformation, that we are more than ever caught up in the mercenary scramble to the top of the heap, lionizing those who have reached some theoretical pinnacle—usually by virtue of the number of dollar signs amassed rather than by the expansiveness of their character.” —- beautifully said brother :)
“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 valvèd voice.”
Loafing seems to be WW’s favorite activity and mode of being, and here it reminds me very much of meditation - a wordless, quiet, unpatterned, “should-less” (“not custom or lecture, not even the best”) abiding, except perhaps for this lull, this hum of a “valvèd voice” which could almost be, perhaps, a mantra—the sacred “Om”—more of a sound than a word. I find something very comforting in this idea that loafing could be a kind of sacred activity, especially when we are indoctrinated into this regime of enterprise, multi-tasking, and side-hustling (hustle, as in, “move it or lose it”—as though simply being, enjoying the moment, is some kind of modern sin against ambition, progress and capitalism.)
In this verse, we have the Self/Body and the Soul apparently in erotic union, as equals, neither abasing itself to the other while so much of literature (and scripture) before the modern era placed the Soul at the top of a definite hierarchy in which the body, and especially sex, were placed at a sinful depth. This is a remarkable moment in the 19th century, to imagine both the body lifted up to a state of grace, and the soul or spiritual self helped down from its pedestal to assume its place among the pleasures and delights of the embodied world.
I love that in that moment of the joining of the Self and the Soul, WW gives to us such a beautiful assurance of the divine in us, where “the hand of God is the promise of my own … the spirit of God is the brother of my own” and he goes on to identify with all people as his brothers and sisters, as well as all life—trees and ants alike—and that love is the “kelson” (a shipbuilding term) or foundational supporting structure of creation.
Mark Edmundson in “Song of Ourselves” talks quite a bit about the move from a hierarchical structure of society (the feudal structure of lord/subject, or “God” and sinners) to a dialectical one, in which the Self and the Soul, or the Body and the Divine are in conversation with each other, rather than one in service to the other, as represented in this invitation to the Soul to loaf in the grass with the body. He has some interesting comments:
“In a hierarchical world, the Soul might choose to stay in hiding to avoid humiliations. But in a world without superiors and inferiors, the Soul’s humane, democratic pride can stay intact … People may become more sympathetic, and also more creative, in a culture where they can sustain their dignity all the time. They will not have to surround themselves with defenses to fend off insults, implicit and overt, from others … Democracy, Whitman suggests, is where the Soul can be most free … We need to be reminded, and Whitman does remind us, that we in this democracy are brothers and sisters—all of us, from the most to the least. We may grow angry with each other. But we must never despise each other or hold each other in contempt … in a democracy, we must strive to be friends.”
A tall order, for sure—progress not perfection, of course. But also, this stands in such stark contrast to the current political currents around the world, where anger and denunciation seem to be getting more and more shrill. I’d love to believe that fascism is getting louder because it’s feeling more threatened than ever, but that remains to be seen.
I'm coming in a week late here, but so glad I didn't skip this juicy verse! I agree, I especially loved that second stanza. The lull...the hum of your valved voice. That melody-less sound that permeates all being. So many ancient sacred texts attribute life force energy itself with the quality of sound. That's what this makes me think of. The sound of unconditioned being. And then the image of the soul penetrating the body through the heartspace with its tongue! That's some potent imagery there. That boundless tongue simultaneously reaching up from the heart to the beard and down to the feet. The description is so tactile. You can feel the wetness of the tongue and the hair of the beard and the rough skin of the feet. It's all celebrated here instead of seen as vulgar. It really is a pioneering bit of poetry.
Yes, I loved that so much "the hum" - it's like a state of being both formed and unformed, not rushing to describe our experience, to categorize or place it in context - simply BE. Thanks Jenna!
I have to echo what Jenna said below - your take on this weeks verse helped me get a better handle on it.
I did think of the 2nd stanza in a similar vain to you in that “the hum of your valves voice” sounded to me like enjoying the simple things in life and the important things like our connection with those closest to us. But I can also see how it could represent mediation.
I'm enjoying it too :) Your take on the valved voices also makes perfect sense - WW might have read Thoreau and the Bhagavad Gita, but he certainly never heard recordings of chanting and mantras, so this is probably much more of a personal association for me.
"Should" - I feel like the note for this week's verse is all the Shoulds of life, all the things other people are telling us are important, almost our duty to uphold, and to which WW is saying, "No thanks." This includes the "heroes" of every age, the people we are told to honor - the "Greats" - as though they were not also human beings - as though much time and money weren't spent on manipulating those images, their trappings and titles and divine rights - and as though their image in our popular imagination doesn't have more to do with our need for golden calves than who they actually were. I think WW would say the same of himself, our great bard: "Witness, and wait..." Attend, but do not worship. There is something so much more important at the heart of this poem than the lionization of the poet, which I think is true of art in general - and something all too easy to forget with our prizes and accolades.
I'm reminded of a popular metaphor of meditation, which says our thoughts are like a moving train that we watch from a point beside the track - notice each car as it is in front of you, and then let it pass - this is a way to imagine the self, not as an accumulation of all these individual cars and their contents, people, stuff, but as the constant passage into and then back out of our awareness. "These come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself." At this point I would actually be surprised if Whitman had not read Thoreau and some of Indian philosophy.
But another thing I'm reminded of is the concept of "keep your own side of the street clean" - this is popular in 12-step programs, and a reminder to worry about your own life (and sobriety) and let others worry about theirs. "I have no mockings or arguments..." I've personally found a great deal of wisdom in that, something along the lines of "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt..." But even more, it's a kind of curiosity, and humbleness: "Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it." Wondering... I like that, what a positive and open stance to take in life.
I really like your take on this week's verse. I struggled a bit with the verse myself until I read your comment here. For me, I read this list of everyday, mundane things we encounter and then WW's comment that "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am" and I balked. I don't think I subscribe to the notion that the essence or wholeness of what I am is apart from these things at all. Rather, it is a part OF these things. It almost seems like this verse is a departure from the previous where I felt WW was describing the sacredness of the physical world, but here is making a hierarchy where some life experiences are worth having/talking about and some are a waste of time and energy. But your comment brought me back around. And I especially love the image of the passing train as self. That is amazing and feels SO right! Incidentally, I have a post coming out in a few minutes about the self where I linked to your first comment in this thread. Now I wish I had also included your paragraph about the train. Something for next time! Thank you again for this journey! ❤️
Actually I think your insight is totally valid - I have often wondered (still wonder) if there is a certain looking down the nose at thoughts, because in my spiritual lexicon, every life, every moment, every POV is part of a unity, there is nothing wasted - it's hard to reconcile that with the "monsters" and the infliction of suffering, but that's a different argument. Our thinking and analyzing and so forth are what make things like art and science possible, so why should that be any less valid or important than the serenity of meditation or lovingkindness? My answer is that it's not, but the ability to step out of it, to not get so caught up in it that we can see no other pov or perspective - which leads to obsession, close mindedness, and yes, in some cases cruelty - is an important muscle, both emotional, mental, and spiritual, and leads us to the middle way we've heard so much about... ;) I quite agree it seems to be a sidestep by Uncle Walt, but maybe not, or maybe more will be revealed... Thank you so, so much for your lovely and insightful comment, Jenna! And thanks for the link! 🩵🩷🤍
“ I have no mockings or arguments, ... just witness and wait”. I feel like there is a real power in that to be able to stand apart from our judgements and opinions of the world and just wait and see what will be.
And I think you illuminate that (and much more) very well in your comment, Troy. :)
I had a vision while reading this verse of life unending, as if the child is just a limb of the parent—the same life with fresh eyes, a new day—the NOW day—and though the links in the chain (of DNA?) may separate, they remain a part of a greater whole, and become a part again on the other side. It is sometimes hard to remember that, despite however difficult and trying it can sometimes be, life is an unbroken chain of birth, joining, and procreation going back to the first proto-cells—we are all a success story, and a single, great family—it really is a knitting together of life.
I’m fascinated by Ed Folsom’s comment on the second stanza:
“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
“Now” is repeated four times, and refers to inception (beginning, birth) and “youth or age” (the stages of life) and perfection (now, Nirvana?) and finally, heaven or hell, our final, illusory destination. Whitman is saying that perfection, everything we need, resides in the eternal NOW, there is nothing after now (because once we arrive, there we are again—Now,) nor anything better—right now we have everything we need to live in perfect happiness and delight. I love this. I would say, too, that in all of his reading, I wouldn’t be surprised if WW read about and found inspiration in Eastern philosophy and Buddhism (as I recall, Thoreau and Emerson both read from Eastern texts.)
In this verse, we are also talking again about the unity of body and soul, the material and the divine by my way of thinking, and how “lacks one lacks both”—they are knitted together, these two seemingly different states - in actuality, they are so deeply intertwined, we are mistaken in rejecting either, or of elevating one over the other. I think this is at the heart of his “democracy” really, this rejection of hierarchy and exclusion, and his inviting us to instead cast off our assumptions and arrogance, and embrace the unifying experience of the now.
When I was younger, I would read things from eastern texts or spiritual teachers that said things along the lines of: “everything you need is here now” or “everything you seek is within” and at the time — not being in a good place within myself — those comments bothered me. It just didn’t feel that simple. But as I’ve gotten a bit older and gotten to a better place within myself, those ideas are starting to make more sense to me. And to tie this into WW verse, I have a feeling he is echoing the same sort of sentiment as those comments.
I know exactly what you mean - I'm sometimes troubled by the sense that what is working for me now (sober and distressingly middle-aged 😂) would not have worked when I was a kid, vulnerable and uncertain. But I've come to think that's a fruitless endeavor - we do the best with what we've got, and right now, I have the means to pursue peace, and I've worked hard to get here so I'm not going to say "No thanks" just because it wasn't always so. 🕊️Thank YOU, Michael! 🤍
I had a vision while reading this one too. Or, actually, I recalled a vision I had had a couple years back. I saw the earth, and all the living beings emerge from it--poke out of it--for a time, then sink back in. This perpetual undulation of life expressing out, then going back in. Much like the earth breathing. Breathing out life forms, then breathing them back in. And what goes back in, nourishes the whole. Nothing was ever truly separate or distinct, just emerged a little bit, but still connected to the whole before returning back to it. I love that this verse reminded me of that vision!
I also thought it was ingenious of WW, in this verse on his maybe not-so-favorable opinion on duality, to begin it by being in opposition to the talkers. Even in his preference, and his insightful wisdom on nowness and unity, he demonstrates that duality is also (and paradoxically) an inescapable part of the oneness.
I love that he speaks to the importance of the body, the seen, the immanent, in a time when spirituality was all about transcendence. And, even more so, as you pointed out, that they are knitted together. He was writing about the 'both-and' principle without naming it as such. Do you know if he studied Thomas Aquinas?
Thank you for continuing to host this, Troy! I so look forward to my dose every week. ❤️
I really don't know, although Aquinas is one of those writers that I think someone reading and educating themselves back in the early 19th century would have heard of and been attracted to - one of those classical writers people read right on up until our modern age. (I've never read him, but I did a survey of philosophy in college which included Kant and Descartes, who he apparently influenced.) Anyway, now I'm hot to get a biography of WW if one can be found, I'm sure there's a good one out there, and I do love reading about people's lives when I'm also studying their work. And its fascinating what you say about immanence v. transcendence - I'm really not sure I understand the difference between the two at least in the context of Emerson's historical movement, more study needed (will we ever find the time to pursue all these different avenues of inquiry? :)
I love the vision you mention - poking out but not separated, people and the world, the earth's breath. I have often thought about how "of" the earth we are, completely - but then I'm also reminded too by science shows which explain that all of the heavier elements besides hydrogen/helium are created in stars through fusion, and so we are literally star stuff, born from destruction.
So glad you're here, Jenna, I'm fascinated to see what more Uncle Walt has in store for us... ⭐💛😃
Hello again, moving on to the 2nd verse of “Song of Myself” and this one starts out with a really interesting metaphor:
“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.”
What are the perfumes? Books, we are told, by both Ed Folsom at UofIowa and Mark Edmundson. I’m often not great at interpreting these sorts of poetic metaphors so I appreciate it’s just being spelled out for me, and apparently, in an early notebook WW explicitly said that literature was a perfume in the sense that it fills our minds with a pervasive—and hard to resist—way of perceiving.
I think this definitively answers Jeffrey Streeter’s comment from last week about whether WW was widely read—definitely yes. He loves reading, apparently, but he has a healthy skepticism for it. The views expressed by others are not without their bias, but WW is saying we can find the unvarnished truth of the world by using our own senses, and goes on in a passage which invokes all of them, and some erotic imagery too (“love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine…A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms.”) It’s the undistilled perception through the body (his “respiration and inspiration”) which is the true source of all we know, and all of the books that went before must be seen for what they are, “second or third hand.”
I want to take a moment to also point out another possibility, and specifically, why he might have chosen the notion of perfumes to describe the literary tradition—possibly by pointing to that greatest of traditions/dogmas, the Bible. At that time (and possibly still, in the Western world) if there is only one book in a home, that book is probably a Bible, and I wonder if the perfume might not also be alluding to the incense of churches? His parents were Quaker, apparently, so it’s hard to know if he was even familiar with the smoking pendulums employed in Catholic churches, but he was a pretty smart guy. It just seems to me he’s employing here a trope very similar to the break from the Catholic church represented in the Protestant reformation—dispense with the middlemen, go direct to the source, only in this case, he’s even throwing the Bible with its “perfumes” out the window, and then throwing off his clothes and running out the door naked, no filters whatsoever. “Ultimately, Whitman wants to show us how to live a righteous life that is not based on commandments and constraints.” (ME, SoO)
One other point I found really interesting in Mark Edmundson’s book returns to the idea of democracy. “Most writing up until 1855 had been feudal: that is, it celebrated the aristocratic, the rich, the extraordinary. Whitman devotes himself to writing about the common and everyday: that’s the kind of poetry a democracy needs. We’re done with kings, done with pontentates of all sorts…He’s an American Adam—a useful term put forward by the critic R.W.B. Lewis—who wants to begin life all over.” And: “To be naked is to jettison identifying class markers.” (ME, SoO)
This is fascinating, and to me, bolsters the idea that a priest is just another kind of aristocrat, elevating or interceding between us and the divine (and in the case of the Pope, an actual king.) But more specifically, as a writer, I am struck by how much literature indeed is concerned with the wealthy, the powerful, or the extraordinary even today—the new aristocracy of democracies, the super-wealthy and famous, or just as often, the super-human: vampires, spies, super- and action heroes, wildly talented martial artists whose skills defy physics.
We continue to idolize these qualities the way we conduct our politics—trickle-down, all of the attention, money and importance lavished at the manufactured tip of a human pyramid, while the plebs at the base are gun downed, literally and figuratively, just so much fuel for the heroic lives of the privileged and self-important few.
WW was urging us to dispense with all of this nonsense 169 years ago. We are incredibly slow learners.
Just as last time, your comment and WW verse has left me pondering many things — which I think is one of the great values of art.
As for what I think WW by perfumes, it feels so hard to know, I do like the idea of it being something as simple as the different ‘fragrances’ of life — but that’s just a random thought. I feel it makes much more sense that it was about literature or the bible.
You know, it really could be the many ways of looking at life, of considering other people's perspectives, and I think that is one of the joys of living and community. I'm no poetry expert but I think, just like in fiction, sometimes underlying meanings and themes present themselves after the fact and are just as valid as what the explicit, conscious intention might have been. :)
Yes, I agree. I also like when the meaning is metaphorical or vague as it allows different readers to interpret the meaning in a way that speaks to them. :)
This verse felt so intimate to me. Like I was there with WW in his naked wildness and not even his own words stood between us. The idea of perfumes being books makes sense (and I LOVE your take on perfumes being related to clergy). I wonder, too, about perfumes being planks, or the structure itself of houses and rooms. To be sheltered can be intoxicating. That sense of security is alluring, but it is a distilled version of life. Being in our safe structures, reading about divinity, versus being out in it, nakedly merging with the divine. I'm really loving this journey, Troy! Thank you so much for generously guiding it! ♥️♥️
I love that idea, Jenna - in a "house of God" sense, even, as though WW is saying we must dispense with everything that comes between us and the immediacy of our naked selves and the cosmos. "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it..." -Willy Wonka 😘🎩🍭 (Which makes me want to find out whether WW and WW were somehow related, though as Roald Dahl was a Brit, and a bit of plum, probably not... 😂)
I wish you would go on! First and perhaps foremost, “I call it “GG” for secret reasons”, I adore you. Secondly, “is an invocation of a combined spiritual element between the self (my self, your self, our selves) and a simple delight in, and reverence for, life.” made me fall even more deeply in love with this poem, so thank you. I also took this opening to be speaking to a mystical view of existence, separation being an illusion, the universe and everything in it being one thing, and nothing goes unaffected by anything else, whether perceived or not. I found myself pausing on ‘assume’, my brain always goes to the ‘suppose to be the case’ meaning, but here I assume(!) WW to be meaning ‘what I take on, you shall take on’, again reflecting that view, maybe even alluding to morality and karma, but at least saying that ‘my’ joy, my sins, my fears and delights are all equally ‘yours’. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on ‘as good’, in that last line, if you have any…
Thanks again for doing, my dear. It’s my / your / our joy 💗
And I adore you dear Chloe... Yes there is a comment on the WhitmanWeb which I made note of about "assume" and I think it could be a question of equivalence, me=you=Universal Soul, and the "as good" like "one as good as the other." But the comment said assume could be another meaning, assuming a role, or a form, and I rather like that - as though this is a kind of conjuring of ideas and forms, an experiment in identity, and in a sense asking us to try these ideas on for size with him. I'm sure more will be revealed!
Oh, wonderful! Thank you. Yes, of course re 'as good'. And that's so interesting about assume as identity or idea...I love reading it as an invitation, in that way.
I haven't done this with a poem in well over a decade and I had completely forgotten how much I enjoy it, and you chose the most perfect poem. So, thank you, really, I am so enjoying this.
Thank you, Troy for this lovely initiative! It's always wonderful to read great poetry, and Whitman is magnificent at his best, as here.
I guess my starting point for thinking about a poem is to consider why it's a poem and not a few lines of prose with similar content. Put another way, what is it doing that only a poem can do? The opening line, which you highlight below, gives us a clue, with its strong rhythm (essentially, blank verse) with its echo of MIlton, which is picked up by the use of "sing" (Paradise Lost begins with "sing" as arguably the main verb though it's an imperative), but we have to wait for line 6 for it to arrive. This suggests to me that there is a conscious or unconscious sense of poetic legacy here. In this case, it's also a point of departure, because Whitman will celebrate himself and sing himself. He's not asking a muse (as Milton) and he's not describing the Fall of Man (as in Paradise Lost). I don't know whether Whitman had read Milton, but on this evidence, I'd say he had. And he's breaking away from tradition while acknowledging it and putting himself in relation to it. Which is very energising!
I also note Whitman's use of "m" and "s" sounds in the opening lines as well as the repetition of "myself" (with a different meaning). It's beautifully crafted; how he gives emphasis to the meaning of the key words through these sound clusters. And then there's his intriguing use of the word "assume," with its various meanings all in play here.
As you say, there's a lot going on in this rich and subtle poem - just in those opening lines. Thank you for the chance/permission to indulge myself in this way! I hope I haven't overdone it. :)
Not at all! I could read a whole volume of your musings on poetry - your post about Larkin's Whitsun Weddings was a bloody delight...
I think you must be right that WW read Milton - as most autodidacts, he probably read widely, and Mark Edmundson mentioned he read Emerson extensively (and went on to invent the book blurb by quoting Emerson's response to Leaves, without permission. 😂)
Also worth noting that the original 1855 edition did not include that second clause of the first line - "and sing myself" came later - WhitmanWeb is using the 1892/93 edition. Edmundson's book includes the 1855 version, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Perhaps as this project wends on, I'll weigh in on the differences.
Thanks for stopping by, Jeffrey, you are most welcome here! 🌟
Thanks for stopping by my - *OUR* - little project. I hope you will get as much out of this deep-dive into "Song of Myself" (SoM) as I do. Some important notes re: Walt Whitman (WW) before I delve a bit deeper.
Walt Whitman had no formal education. He could read, wrote fiction and journalism pieces, and was a typesetter. When he self-published his first book of poetry "Leaves of Grass" in 1855 - which contained the first, untitled version of SoM - he had been working as a carpenter framing houses in Brooklyn. “Scholars say that Song is the first significant instance of free verse,” says Mark Edmundson in “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy.” (ME/SoO for citations - I have the Kindle version, so I can’t note page numbers.)
As mentioned in the first verse, he had just turned 37, and the American “experiment” - a nation with a constitutional democracy for the first time since the ancient Greeks - was not 80 years old. The formal discovery of the atom - though also deriving from an ancient Greek precursor - was even newer.
This is the ground from which Walt Whitman emerged as one of the most respected and beloved American poets.
I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the significance and legacy of Walt or his other poetry - this isn’t a university course, and I’m hardly a scholar. I’ll try to stick each week to the relevant verse, and any details or bits of information that I glean from U. of Iowa’s WhitmanWeb project, or Mark Edmundson’s book - or other books or relevant research I pick up along the way - will mostly be sprinkled in to help me elucidate a point about how the poem and its ideas affect me.
By all means, I hope YOU will feel free to discuss anything about WW, his poetry, your own insights and research, and I will do my best to respond and acknowledge the contributions of everyone who drops in.
I CELEBRATE MYSELF…?
I just want to make note of those first three words, because this poem is all about identity, and the dichotomy between I and You is significant (“I” is the first word of the poem, and “you” the last.) But celebrate? Here are some words associated with “celebrate” according to WordHippo.com, my go-to for synonyms and such: Joyous. Appreciation. Honor. Triumphant. Elation. Jubilation. Pleasure. Satisfaction. Also: To perform a (usually religious) rite or ceremony.
What I’m seeing here is a declaration of love, from WW toward himself, of course, but in another sense - and significantly, in the evolving relationship between “I” and “You” throughout the poem - it is an invocation of a combined spiritual element between the self (my self, your self, our selves) and a simple delight in, and reverence for, life.
I have to admit that it is deeply moving to me to think this poem is a convocation of love and life, of a spiritual component to each of us and our birthright as living beings. Much of my personal spiritual journey and sobriety is built on an attempt to understand where “spirit” resides, and I am heartened to find in SoM a very powerful declaration that “God” - or goddess, deity, spirit, unity, higher power, whatever you call it (I call it “GG” for secret reasons) - is alive in every one of us.
BUT WHO IS THE “YOU” in the first line?
It’s tempting to think that “you” is the reader, simple enough, and obviously he is trying to draw us in to his ritual. But Mark Edmundson believes it’s Walt’s own Soul, which he invites in the next line. “The Soul - at least Whitman’s Soul - is uneasy about entering the world as it is. Yet to Whitman, the Soul belongs to the world. It is rightly one with the physical-every atom that belongs of the Self belongs to the Soul as well, or at least it could.” (ME,SoO)
I find this a really interesting interpretation, inviting a oneness between the body and the soul, the spiritual and material worlds, which I wholeheartedly accept and agree with - to me, they are two sides of the same coin, Being and Transcendence, the same essence in different aspects.
But I’m also still stuck on the idea that he IS speaking to the reader, and I don’t think we must necessarily say the Reader and the Soul are mutually exclusive. Perhaps - bear with me - Being is the differentiated form of a universally shared Transcendence, and when he refers to “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” he means a shared, universal Soul expressed through the multiplicity and interconnectedness of the material world.
Ed Folsom’s WhitmanWeb entry mentions WW’s abandonment “...of the two main things that separate people, that create animosity, jealousy, and war—beliefs and possessions: “what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to you as good belongs to me.” At every level of our being, we are incessantly transferring and exchanging materials, ideas, emotions, affections. The atoms that yesterday composed a living cow or a growing plant today are part of us, as the eternal atoms of the universe continue their nonstop interaction and rearrangement.”
This echoes the Buddhist concept of eternal change - birth, life, death, rebirth - and how the spiritual path leads beyond dogma (“Creeds and schools in abeyance”) and the illusions of security, wealth, and power, to a oneness, an egalitarianism within individuality, which sweeps away accidents of birth and fortune (an artificial aristocracy) to arrive at a true democratic vision: we are all, eternally, One - no better and no less than each other, because we all spring from the same undifferentiated spiritual ground.
I could go on, but I won’t. I’ll try to be a little more succinct in the future - no promises - feel free to skim. There’s so much here, it’s so dense and rich, but I would love to hear from YOU. ~ T. xo
Wow, Troy! I don’t have the words (which is a change) to express how moved I was not just by your comment, but also by how deeply you have read into Whitman’s poem, and how much meaning you have drawn from it (obviously mixing it with your own understandings). It is also amazing to me, as so much of what you just said — although articulated better than I think I could say it — is very similar to the spiritual views I hold. I have had experiences — which I intend to write about one day — which have made me believe in a sort of universal oneness. And so, it was lovely to hear you express that in your own way. Especially with this line: “Being is the differentiated form of a universally shared Transcendence” — I mean, wow! So well said.
Also I did think when I was reading your comment on who the ‘you’ is in Whitman’s line — maybe it’s both the reader and his soul... Especially if were all connected in this way. I do think you may have been saying that as well, but I just thought I’d add it in. :)
That's exactly in line with that unity - like looking at the same diamond through different facets... I'm realizing too that his philosophy syncs with so much I've thought before. I hope you will write about yours...
I'm purposely not reading ahead because I'm really trying to let each week's verse sit and marinate in my head, really looking forward to how it unfolds - thank you so much for being here Michael... ⭐👍🌟
Ok, so there were about ten mic drops in this comment. I'm not even sure what I want to address first. I felt like all of it was speaking right to me about my current circumstances. Firstly, I have to admit to never having read Whitman. So I went and read just the first stanza of Song of Myself (and fell instantly in love). I celebrate myself. Well, I could've stopped there and my life would have been infinitely changed for the better. I celebrate myself. I don't, but I should. And now I'm going to.
And then this part here: "At every level of our being, we are incessantly transferring and exchanging materials, ideas, emotions, affections. The atoms that yesterday composed a living cow or a growing plant today are part of us, as the eternal atoms of the universe continue their nonstop interaction and rearrangement.” I am literally in the middle of writing a post for next week about the container of self and, basically, this is it in a nutshell.
I'm so excited to go on this Whitman journey with you, Troy! I wish I could get notifications for new comments here, but I'll set myself a reminder to check back. Thanks for doing this!
There will be a link in each of my weekly posts so you can pop in in Fridays. I was thinking EXACTLY the same thing looking at your torus and reading your post today, Jenna, it's incredibly resonant... Thanks for being here! ⭐💛🤗
I told my friend what I was doing with SoM and he was like, "Oh! Kinda like that Julia Child movie... 'Julie & Julia...'" Hmmm... Maybe some next step will emerge along the way, I'm staying open to all the possibilities presented by the reading and the comments and the spirit of Uncle Walt. 🤍
I'm very sorry to report that the University of Iowa's WhitmanWeb commentary on "Song of Myself" has become unavailable online - I'm not sure if by oversight or intentional - and it looks like I'm going to have to buy the book published by U of Iowa Press to have access to the invaluable insights of Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill. No big whoop, but for the present, I'm putting this all on hold.
I've been contemplating rebooting this as a different kind of project, possibly a collection of essays about the themes of the poem. I'd be very open to collaboration if anyone were interested - let me know. In the meantime, many thanks to you few stalwart souls who popped in to comment. 🤍🤍🤍
Oh man. Maybe it’s worth asking them for access?
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-19
I'm immediately struck by the first line of this weeks' verse: "This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger..." It reminds me so much - and I think intentionally invokes - the words of Jesus: "This is my body. This is my blood." And as with Jesus, now Walt is invoking the democracy of his own table, in which all - without exception - are welcome.
I can't remember where I read it, it was many years ago but it's stuck with me, this very simple sort of understanding: we are all one - the number 1, that is - each and all of us, and no 1 is greater than any other. I'm reminded of this any time I experience a moment when someone thinks themself better than someone else. And this doesn't just apply to accidents of birth, to economic or geographic luck, but also to acts - there is a profound way in which even the most monstrous of us is equally (and I really wish I had a better way of saying) "a child of God." That might be he part that's hardest to wrap our thoughts around, because not many will argue that a murderer, a torturer, a monster is the equal of a saint, an innocent, or a hero, except, I think, perhaps in the way that we ourselves can act toward every other living thing - with compassion, with goodwill, with an attempt to understand that their brains may be different, their lives may have been hard, they may never have been taught empathy - their life and their viewpoint may have been warped by fire and fist.
I have this feeling that in Walt's word "astonish" here - when he asks if he astonishes, the same as sunlight, or birdsong - that he is invoking the "ecstasy" of divine love. In a lot of ways, I feel like we are able to feel this in every moment our lives - very different from euphoria, and often obscured by habituation and familiarity - but nevertheless, if at any given moment of our lives we were suddenly struck with a profound newness and fresh eyes - just arrived from another dimension, another planet, another mode of being - even the very smallest of details and sensations would be a kind of ecstasy - astonishing - and perhaps we can regain that if we also remember that these workaday moments will someday no longer be ours.
Here's the text of Lanston Hughes poem, mentioned in the U of Iowa's page for this verse:
I, Too
BY LANGSTON HUGHES (1926)
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Love the way you talk about the ecstasy of divine love. Too often love is defined in such a narrow manifestation.
This was one of my more favorite passages, and glad I "ended" on this note. It's not an end, actually, I've been thinking about publishing a book of essays on the poem and its themes for a little while, though I would love some collaborators. (hint hint) ;)
Oh wow, amazing.
Yes, please. Let's chat if you move forward with this!
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-18
I'm reminded of the story in which Buddha tells the woman who cannot accept her child's death that she should find a mustard seed from a house where no one has died or lost a loved one, and of course, she cannot find such a place. We are more united in our grief and our loss than in our victory, although as a culture, we spend far more time telling stories of the victorious. Maybe it's because we erase the stories of the vanquished? Maybe because the history books were written by and for the victors, while everyone else was too busy trying to make do and survive?
One of the reasons I always had such a hard time with fantasy fiction - even though it was my first love and I spent decades trying to write it - and even a lot of the general fiction is the preponderance of tales about kings, queens, princes/ses, heroes and sorcerers - everything gets boiled down to enormous goods and abject evils, and the story generally goes the same way: "happily ever after."
But are these stories about us and how we live? Or an escape from a zero-sum game?
Walt's trying to redirect our attention away from the parades and the pageantry of victory, to remember that there is bravery and courage, hope and anguish from every angle, and there is richness to be found in everyone's experience.
I love this so much and hope you do continue this project. Much of the writing I want to do is in this realm. part of what has stopped me from starting my memoir is that my story does not necessarily end in "happily ever after all the struggle"... but is a mixody of all the "enormous goods and abject evils," the torturous moments as well as the peak experiences that do not necessarily end up in the place we are all trained to hope that it does. Yet NO MATTER WHAT: "there is bravery and courage, hope and anguish from every angle, and there is richness to be found in everyone's experience" and story.
Start a Substack. Set a schedule. Stick to it. Lots of people have written serial memoirs on here, and having a deadline - whether weekly, or monthly - helps get over perfectionism: you push the "Publish" button whether it's perfect or not. Thanks for stopping by Julia. :)
Thx 4 the push…
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-17
I'm wondering why this week's verse states things in the negative.
"If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or 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."
In the first line he says all of the thoughts he's expressed so far are universal, everyone everywhere in all times, but rather than become fulsome and praising, Walt seems to couch his summation in a kind of rebuke: if these thoughts are particular to you but bear no power over me - if ideas are not about the Big Things and figuring them out - if you don't feel them but just see them (or worse, shut your eyes to them,) they are worthless, or at least very unimportant.
And there's something to that, I suppose - I've often thought that in our drive for "survival" we get lost in the weeds, the picayune details, the me-me-woe-is-me pity party which in much of Western society is not really so much a question of survival but of status, and must look pretty ridiculous to the vast portion of humanity which does indeed fight for survival on a daily basis. (I will never forget the time a wealthy woman sat in a chair in our showroom and actually burst into tears because, God as my witness, she was going to have to drive to Tahoe for a ski weekend because her husband's jet was undergoing maintenance.)
Anyway, it seems to me that Walt gives us the measure of our attention and concern, the things that really are important: "This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe." It's in the things we share (or refuse to share) - the things we have in common, the most basic needs of all life on earth, and our field of shimmering grass which if you ask me, is a far more beautiful metaphor than ashes to ashes, or dust to dust.
Interestingly, the first part of the Genesis 3:19 from which the ashes and the dust derives, says: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken..." And what is bread but the fruit of grasses?
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-16
So I've said before that I don't feel like I'm especially lyrical in my writing - oh sure, I can turn a phrase, and I have a sharp eye for wit and wry humor - to each their own, and I suppose that if this verse is saying anything it's that we each have our own view, our own talents, our own place, and each of these is just another expression of a sort of Oversoul from which we all spring and to which we all return. But I gotta say that some of the commentary from the U of Iowa - this week by a "CM" in the Afterward - is really rather beautiful.
"For every bright sun that lights the sky there are innumerable dark suns, in galaxies near and far, around which we orbit unaware, now brushing up against someone or something with the key to a room in which the miraculous may reside, now veering off in another direction for reasons that mystify. That we do not always know why we do the things we do reminds us that we are caught up in the mysterious currents flowing through the universe, the sea charted in “Song of Myself,” and here we learn that the ship we boarded at the beginning of time is named Diversity." - CM
I'm reminded of a time when Diversity first struck me - it was at the pride parade in San Francisco, and it might have even been a member of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) who always got the biggest cheers, bless their huge and loving hearts - and the sign read "Difference Enriches Us All" - which is just another word for diversity, and I thought, you know what, that's right, how boring would it be if everyone were the same, if we didn't have the bumper cars of life bonking around in joyous new combinations but just some lockstep of sameness, ugh. So here we have an expression of those "mysterious currents" in Walt's "farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest." Fancy-man? I think he means me.
I love this line especially: "The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place." There's a yin/yang to this - his dark suns and his impalpable, which I might call the unknowable-not-now, the "abyss" with its dragons which I've actually never really thought of as a frightening thing, but one of adventure. I think this verse is proclaiming himself, and inviting us, to think of ourselves - all of us - as adventurers, fellow travelers.
😂 I think you're the fancy man too. Lol. I really resonated with the whole first part of this verse. Over the last few months, I've begun a practice of trying to include AS me all that I experience and I've been doing this by envisioning pulling the experience in for a hug until we sort of dissolve into one another. But then I was a little stumped by the idea of everything in its place. Maybe I'm getting too hung up on the metaphysics. I really loved this quote in the foreward (the name of the writer escapes me): "...testing how wide he can expand his sympathetic impulse before the self dissipates, and then he contracts back into a firm sense of self, expressing confidence that he can contain the multitudes he has absorbed, that they in fact strengthen the self." This feels like the ultimate dance of self and other.
😘 I love that, dissolving the boundaries between self and experience - it reminds me of another comment somewheres around here about how we have direct evidence that the universe is sentient, intelligent and loving to the exact extent that we can recognize it in ourselves - we are part of the universe, after all... Thanks Jenna!!
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-15
I will confess that I have not yet made the time to really, slowly read and linger over each of the offerings in this week's verse, the second-longest in the poem. I will also confess that the technique, in fiction, often leaves me a little cold - I want to say I put down a book one time (I won't say who but they are on Substack) because there was just one too many catalogs of things, and I found it, if not lazy, at least not as "lyrical" as I imagined they thought it was. In any event, I've been super-duper busy busy reading for the BookLife Prize - 5 books/half a million words in 11 days (yes, I skim a bit) - and I haven't made the time.
But isn't that the puzzle of our lives, that Walt himself was trying to bring to our attention? Not so much that we don't have the time (usually) but that we don't make the time (often) for the things that really matter. My bad.
I'm going to call out three lines in the middle of these 75 which the U of Iowa foreword pointed out -
"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)" -
and note the commentary: "It is as if Whitman, in this catalogue of American life, is absorbing everything, accepting the nation’s wild diversity, pausing to reject just one thing: discrimination itself."
I have to say, I really love that; there was a time not so long ago when in the midst of my drinking, yes, I made a fool of myself, and people were unkind and disrespectful, and I felt enormous shame over it. This moment of compassion by Walt really moves me, and is a model to me for how to see people who have lost their way and may not know how to get back on track - thank god I did get sober, and can now pay the kindness back.
ALSO - I went and bought what I thought was a biography of Whitman, to supplement my understanding of the man and his milieu - "Walt Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative: The Pulitzer-Prize Winning Biography" by Emory Hollway Jr. A narrative? Yeah, whatever, that's cool. Published in 2022 it said; Pulitzer Prize it said.
Things started going sideways almost immediately when I found myself having to read the same sentences three times just to figure out what they were saying (and not always successfully.) Florid? You betcha. Verbose? Holy shit. Archaic? Um yeah. What the fuck was going on?
And then I came upon a passage where the author referred to milk cows as "milch" cows, and I was like, what the fuck is a milch cow?? So I looked it up, and it said it's just another word for milk, derived from Middle English! What the hell? What nut would use milch instead of milk in this day and age, ferchrissake?
Turns out, Mr. Hollway Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography was published in 1926! And won the Pultizer in 1927!! Ah ha. And by the way, he's got none too many positive words, and all very veiled and circumspect, about the gay elephant in the room, so at this point I'm going to just finish it out as a soporific before bed, and then find myself (hopefully) a more clear, modern and accepting biography. I'll keep you posted...
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-14
I love this quote from the commentary by Ed Folsom of U of Iowa:
"Most of us spend our lives devoted to the distant and the abstract, only to recognize too late that the miracles all around us all the time are what we have deadened ourselves to. In this section, Whitman offers his most radical statement of democratic identity: “What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.” This is the poet’s credo: he will discover himself not in the exotic, the faraway, the difficult, or the costly, but rather in the common people he encounters every day and the animals that inhabit and enliven his world."
How many times have I said that I'm tired of stories about super heroes, kings and queens, spies and magicians and stars? (Too many, if you ask my husband.) For so many years, I wrapped myself in a cocoon of escapism, trying to write fantasy stories that ultimately boiled down to hyper-stylized battles between ultimate good and evil. But I didn't really find my voice until I started writing about realistic people and events, the everyday moments, and small victories and defeats. How often has your darling said something so funny you've wished other people could have heard it? Must there be a studio audience to realize how precious and adorable your loved one is, or how courageous in the face of the trials we all inevitably face?
I think that's what this week's verse really urges so clearly: not holding out for heroes and riches, but finding the wealth of experience all around us, every day; not demanding that life supply us meaning (or else we'll declare it a meaningless vacuum) but opening ourselves to the riches the world lays at our feet every moment of our lives.
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-13
I love this line from the UofIowa's analysis this week: "This self-identification of the poet with the black dray-driver is another step toward a democratic way of thinking, as the poet becomes a caresser of all life (“not a person or object missing”), absorbing everyone and everything into his non-discriminating and always-expanding self."
I was just telling Kim Warner in our recorded conversation this week (post on Wednesday!) that I had a sort of epiphany, recently, about a kind of "witnessing" urge I've been having - and now of course I realize that it comes from Walt, and I suppose I don't feel any less enthralled that he is the source, but humble and grateful. It's this feeling that I can keep my eyes and ears open, and my mouth shut - that I can accept everyone on their own terms, and feel no need to categorize, to label or assess (and I suppose this includes me too - no more judging, no more fearing, no more less than.) And of course its within Song of Myself that this comes to me, so it's a sort of legacy from Uncle Walt I suppose.
And then there are the lines: "Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life." That's quite a statement! He goes further: "And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me."
And it's funny because I also told Kim that we don't find completion in our writing, but in our day-to-day lives - and this comes from Walt, too. And it's true, isn't it? In the eternal Now, there are no past achievements, no great accomplishments to raise our hats any higher than the heads on which they sit.
Is it possible that Walt really is seeping into my bones as we go? We're only on verse 13 of 52 - we still have 39 more to go! :)
I love this verse! To me, it was like in reading this one it finally clicked that a huge part of these animistic values, of including everything as the self, is noticing it all in the first place. Really paying attention. "Witnessing" as you said (I can't wait for your conversation with Kim, btw ❤️). I think my favorite line this week is: "I believe in those wing'd purposes". Something about that really brought Walt's democratic thinking to life for me; that whatever everything else is doing is just as important as what I'm doing. There is no hierarchy of purpose. And, Troy, I want to say THANK YOU for hosting this space. I got myself overwhelmedly busy the last couple weeks and then came back here today. This poem (and your reflections) are like a balm for my soul.
I'm so glad, Jenna, and delighted to have you here. 💛 It is funny how adding some wings on a thing gives it such great space, all of a sudden ;) I agree it feels like a great noticing, a survey of all creation, so to speak - and I know (since I read ahead a little) that what is coming is a reckoning of the divine after this marvelous display of worldly gifts.
Ha, just coincidentally came across this. My last post revolves around the much quoted "so I contradict myself" verse from Song of Myself 51. In case anyone's interested: https://constantinemarkides.substack.com/p/im-getting-divorced
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-12
From last week's play in the surf, and the gaze of the woman upon their bodies, we now have men at work, and Uncle Walt feasting his eyes on the "grimed and hairy chests" their lithe waists and massive arms of blacksmiths - dear me, is it possible WW's poetry was the erotic fiction of pre-Civil War America?
This is another one of those very short verses - the last one dealt with his childhood memory of a hayride on his family farm - but this one is all business, or is it?
On the one hand, I'm reminded of a slogan from certain rooms - "a worker among workers" - which is simply a reminder that we are part of a collective, and all have our parts to play - no one of us (despite many howls to the contrary) "superior" to any other.
The UofIowa's comment cites both the repetitive writing of words for writers, and a kind of flow state, where seemingly boring, repetitious work can lead us to intense embodiment. It just now occurs to me that one of the things that flow states often have in common is a kind of goal image, where the repetition melds with an imagined image of an endpoint, be it a performance, or a creation; in this case, the hammered creations of the forge that are the earliest and most basic kinds of technology that allowed humans to build the world around them.
I come back again and again to Walt's insistence that the divine is manifest in the body, that the soul and body are one, that every act is a holy act, including desire, looking, observing. Witnessing - that seems to be one of the big themes of this whole poem for me - I expect to see many more verses that remind us to treasure the here and now, the blood and sweat of work as much as the thrill and laughter of play. xo ~ MTF
I got a definite sense of —‘everything in the right place at the right time’ — in this one.
Definitely! Isn't that a satisfying (if elusive) feeling? ;) Thanks Michael!
Link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-11
I haven't said much about the obvious references to sex, esp. between men, that keep cropping up in SoM - I'm actually a little surprised that the poem received as much acclaim as it did, in that day, when it all seems so in your face - but maybe that's the modern me asserting that it is obvious, when a Victorian person might have no inkling of what was going on barely below the surface. So many references like "They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray" sprinkled everywhere - as a modern gay man, it doesn't seem so scandalous or titillating to me even if you read it loud and clear, though again, to a gay man at that time, it might have been incredibly thrilling to see even a veiled reference to men's bodies.
And speaking of men's bodies - the woman gazing, joining them in the water in her imagination - also seems to couch the act of looking at men in a palatable though still scandalous context - here, a woman takes the revolutionary action of looking and desiring men, and becomes the barely more acceptable stand-in for a man who looks at men.
There's a lot of "looking" in this poem, it seems to me - observing, wondering, witnessing - which in a way, was then - is still - perhaps a revolutionary act. So often we are encouraged to be the actors, to value action and certainty - a kind of arrogant "wholeness" - which does not admit to the need or desire to observe and assimilate new ways of thinking and seeing, but rather, to impose our way on others. Even our biggest "spectacles" - for example, American football - are not about creativity, but strategy, and the brute force of combat. "The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat." Uncle Walt is showing us another way.
I found it hard to draw as much meaning out of this verse as I have other ones, but what you said in your comment about looking and observing as opposed to doing really helped me make sense of things. You are a master interpreter, Troy :)
Thanks Michael - I'm definitely having to dig deep to make sense of some verses, though I'd be lost without the U of Iowa commentary... ;)
I adore all of Whitman--and spent years teaching him.
Thanks Mary - would love to hear more of your thoughts on the subject! :)
Here is a link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-10
These last three verses seem to invoke WW's spirit of the body - the City, the Country, and this week, the Frontier (but also the sea which brought Europeans and Africans to these shores.) He's not dwelling in the subatomic realm with his atoms, but he is in the world of the imagination because he never went out West, never sailed, or met an escaped slave.
Lately I have found myself very hesitant to speak about the conditions of Native Americans and Black Americans - I just watched "Stamped from the Beginning" on Netflix and was shocked by some of what I learned, just as I have been shocked to see what appears to be the rise of racism in America but is really only the opening of my eyes to the horrors that already existed. I accept people's acknowledgement of ancestral lands - personally, I was born on the traditional territory and homelands of the Tongva and Tataaviuk people. I find myself looking and listening more, and speaking less.
Perhaps for Walt, at that time, speaking of imaginary scenarios where the mixing of races was illegal and perilous was the radical voice. But it does strike me that "my eyes settle the land" has a faint tinge of Manifest Destiny about it, and that the "Land" was not in need of "settling." It was a different time. I'm just going to abide with this verse.
Maybe because I read verse 9 and 10 back to back, but this one feels to me like more imaginings of a child...like the lives he lived through those books he mentioned in an earlier verse. And that these imaginary selves he's met through these literary adventures are also part of the self, just as the atoms of cow have become.
Absolutely! The imagination is a powerful enactment of a different kind of reality, with its own alchemy no less real than the material world. Thanks Jenna!
What spoke to me the most about this verse was the lightness of himself by being in the mountains— it felt like a straight up celebration of nature helping our peace of mind. :)
It totally is! And a statement about his solidarity with the freed slave, and love. Plus, love a good clam chowder... ;) Thanks Michael!
Here is a link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-9
This is a funny little section, a throwback to Walt's early childhood on a farm on Long Island, and in keeping with my general habit of just letting the impressions pop out, this reminds me of the Shire in "Lord of the Rings." (Yes, I am a huge fan of Tolkien.) Specifically, it just reminds me of things I've read about Tolkien, how he was affected by WW1 (the movie "Tolkien" shows this beautifully) and longed for a return to a more pastoral existence that seems to have been lost forever - and as shown in the cacophony of city sounds and sights from the verse last week.
I have often wondered what the world would look like if the whole conquering-capitalism-colonial complex had never really taken off - if we'd all gone the way of the bonobos instead of the chimpanzees - and followed a generally more cooperative path than an adversarial one. This verse invokes that longing for a gentler acceptance, rather than an aggressive dominion, for me.
I had to laugh during my reading of this verse. Walt says he's there to help, but he's helpful in the way my son was so often helpful when there was work to be done. 🤗
I wasn’t sure what this verse was saying, but I did get a sense of playfulness. Reading your thoughts helped clarify it as I do feel the playfulness goes gentle acceptance more than aggressive dominion thing.
Thanks Troy :)
It is a strange one - I'd be lost in this poem without the help of the U of Iowa commentary, and Mark Edmundson's book... ;) Thanks Michael!
Here is a link to this week’s verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-8
I'm going to start off this week's note with a note about the first two lines -
"The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand."
For some reason when I read that, and then read the 5th and 6th lines, I had it in my head that the baby was dead - it was only after I read the U of Iowa's Ed Folsom say it was sleeping did I realize that it was alive. But still I wonder: Why the gauze covering it like a shroud (or a sort of mosquito net, I guess)...? And why flies, which are traditionally associated with death and rot? I found it rather odd, and I still wonder if maybe WW is alluding to the emergence of life from death, which he's mentioned before, and bringing the full circle from the birth of the baby, to the lovers, to the suicide and death again.
There's a wonderful illustration by the artist James Christensen of an angel whispering "Mortua sum" which means "I am dead" in Latin, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for what "death" is, and often makes me think that the same place from which babies emerge is the place to which we return.
See the illustration here: https://arthive.com/artists/11714~James_Christensen/works/303609~Plot_7
There's also the wonderful lyric from Sinéad O'connor's song "All Babies":
"All babies are born saying God's name
Over and over, all born singing God's name
All babies are flown from the universe
From there they're lifted by the hands of angels
God gives them the stars to use as ladders
She hears their calls, She is mother and father..." Anyway...
After these three couplets, there's fourteen lines cataloging all the sounds of the city, presumably his NYC, which run the gamut from the sounds of tires and footsteps, barkers and jokes, furious mobs and fights. It culminates with the third to the last line:
"What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum..."
According to Ed Folsom, this is the line which inspired Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" which has a whole catalog of its own exactly 100 years after, and is another one of the great American poems, by another homo, thank you very much.
I love how this sort of "movie" of sounds and images ends - "I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart" - another reference to the metaphor of the train passing through a view of mindfulness I've talked about before.
I though the same thing about the baby! And then I wondered if it was just a reflection of my having seen too many horror movies. Flies always mean there's a dead body around! I was kind of relieved to see you'd thought the baby was dead too. The overall feeling of Walt's time in the city is one of chaos and unpleasantness, but then he lets it pass or he passes. The part about the howls restrained by decorum is one that will stick with me for sure.
You know, although I find cities sometimes very chaotic and overwhelming, I guess not everybody does - go figure ;) So although starting this verse with that sort of apocalyptic image of birth/death/flies and sex and the suicide (Did you see Oppenheimer? The scene in the auditorium after he speaks where the woman cries and the people under the bleachers are having sex? Oy!) I'm keeping an open mind about whether he was actually trying to paint a sort of warning the way Ginsberg was with "Howl" or whether it's just the carnival of life. Thanks Jenna!!
I was taken by the line about the words vibrating. I felt like that was pointing too how words and ideas of the past echo forth to shape our current views. . . That was what grabbed me first anyways. :)
Yes! Thanks for pointing that out. It does feel like a wave of cause/effect from history on down, how words have shaped us, nations and the world. Well spotted, Michael! Thanks!
Here is a link to this week’s verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-7
There are some great words in this verse - manifold, adjunct, immortal, fathomless - sometimes I find myself running to the dictionary to find precise definitions for words that I had only previously sort-of knew, but if asked what it means might stumble. "Manifold" for example, means many and various, also innumerable, but also, as a verb, to make a copy of - I'm reminded of the metaphor of grass that he has been using, how we are all "more alike than not" and it is our similarities which reinforce our shared humanity. "Adjunct" means supplementary to something else, or even subordinate - but here Walt refuses to admit that he is an adjunct to the earth, but rather, is the "mate" to humanity, in all its different stages and shapes and forms, none of which is "stale nor discarded." He insists that we are all immortal and fathomless, and that in a sense he holds us, each and every one of us, as part of himself.
I love the idea that we are all fathomless. How often have we though we understood someone, only to discover something about them later that completely upends our understanding? Or watch someone act so bravely (or so terribly) that again, we realize we don't really know anyone through and through, not even ourselves?
I think in this verse Walt is stepping beyond the known into the unknown, and in his tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and unshaken accceptance, every one of us is part of this fathomless, immortal manifestation of something bigger.
I'm reminded of all the systems we see nowadays - we've always had them but they seem to have proliferated like a hydra with the internet - systems which promise renewed youth, beauty, big muscles, silky hair, untold riches - we used to call it "snake oil" but now mostly just "content" and "marketing." Walt seems to always be looking past these things, beyond the quick fixes and the get rich quick schemes - no easy answers, just a greater comfort and acceptance of the important questions.
I love your comment here as much as I love the verse itself. My overall feeling when I read the verse was that I'd like to have known Walt. He's someone who really sees. In your last paragraph, when you write about him "looking past these things" it brings to mind a philosopher I've been learning about recently, Jean Gebser. He writes about the unfolding of human consciousness and how we are moving into what he calls the integral structure of consciousness (which is so in line with some of my own ideas). Gebser says that this integral structure of consciousness will be marked by transparency and the ability to 'see through'. This verse and your comment make me realize that Walt could 'see through' and in that lies some of his genius.
Oh that's so interesting, Jenna - I'd never heard of Jean Gebser but now I'm going to make a point of reading something about him; you're right, echoes so many things I've always sort of considered true but maybe didn't put words to. And I also wonder how, as a society, we come to consensus when some people want to insist on a more archaic or magical pov (to borrow his system designations) while others are using an integral view. So cool - thanks!
I love that line - “... it’s just as lucky to die”. That is such an interesting and different take from the norm. But it’s one I tend to agree with as living forever seems horrible and never being been seems equally a bummer.
I also really liked what you said: “we don’t really know anyone through and through” — I feel this way too and it can cause a sense of loneliness, but then it can also cause a sense of wonder and awe to try and know.
Thanks Troy :)
You're right, Michael - I think "immortality" would be a kind of hell - while I'm in no hurry to depart, when my time comes, I'll be ready for it. I remember thinking a long time ago that no matter what death is, it is not "worse" than life - but probably not automatically better either. Maybe just so different we cannot comprehend it, but also sometimes I think that whatever it is will cast the whole of life in a very different light than any understanding of it we think we have. 🤍🕊️👻
“.... sometimes I think that whatever it is will cast the whole of life in a very different light than any understanding of it we think we have.” — I love that, Troy. I feel the exact same way :)
Here is a link to this week’s verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-6
I just love this verse of “Song of Myself” - it’s the first time Uncle Walt really tackles the question of the grass in the title of the book in which the poem appeared, Leaves of Grass, and he does so as though from the perspective of a child, as if he is both teacher but also comrade, equally unsure of the true nature of the grass, and only able to offer guesses about what it is, and what it means.
He starts by identifying it with himself, “the flag” of his character and being; and then with the Lord, as a sign and symbol of the mystery of divinity that we can wonder about; and then as a kind of child itself, the “babe of vegetation”—maybe of Mother Nature and the divine feminine?
But then he goes on to describe it as a “uniform hieroglyphic” which Mark Edmundsom in Song of Ourselves calls WW’s “central image for democracy.” It is everywhere, among all people, one of the most common sights wherever you are, and whoever. Edmundson goes on to describe the leaves of grass as more alike than different, and reaching its greatest glory in huge swaths, green in the spring when it is newborn, and the amber waves of grain in its maturity.
And finally Walt compares it to the “beautiful uncut hair of graves” and a number of passages in which grass is shown to spring forth from young people cut down in their prime, and old people—and then, he goes so far as to say “They are alive and well somewhere” which I find so beautiful and comforting. Mark Edmundson believes the next line is one of the most important of the poem: “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.”
This is all so rich with love for his fellow humans, and with the egalitarian, democratic spirit, where every one of us is equal to every other one, and that we can be both individuals, as well as a great people together.
I do sometimes feel like we have never really completed this cycle of democratic transformation, that we are more than ever caught up in the mercenary scramble to the top of the heap, lionizing those who have reached some theoretical pinnacle—usually by virtue of the number of dollar signs amassed rather than by the expansiveness of their character.
We have been watching this documentary on Netflix, “Alexander - The Making of a God” and I just want to let that sink in—that one of the oldest and “greatest” of our historical persons is remembered mainly for war, conquest and domination. It seems to me the vision Walt Whitman presents is one which transcends this model, and still holds greaestt promise for our future.
I love this verse too! It makes me think how much we've misunderstood Death. It makes me think, too, of the earlier verse that Edmunson made the remark about how the atoms that made up a cow yesterday have become us today. You probably know that most of my work is with the dead and I absolutely love the images Walt gives us here of their living, physical continuation through grass. I will never look at grass the same.
He really does give us so much rich imagery to ponder and meditate upon, and I feel an enormous amount of comfort from his expansive view of death. And the grass is just one of so many! Thanks Jenna!
While I really liked WW verse, especially the part about the smallest sprout, which feels so much like the whole circle of life thing — what I really liked what this paragraph from your comment, Troy:
“ I do sometimes feel like we have never really completed this cycle of democratic transformation, that we are more than ever caught up in the mercenary scramble to the top of the heap, lionizing those who have reached some theoretical pinnacle—usually by virtue of the number of dollar signs amassed rather than by the expansiveness of their character.” —- beautifully said brother :)
🙏Thanks Michael... Will we ever learn? I hope so... 🕊️
Here is a link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-5
I’m struck by the second stanza of this verse:
“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 valvèd voice.”
Loafing seems to be WW’s favorite activity and mode of being, and here it reminds me very much of meditation - a wordless, quiet, unpatterned, “should-less” (“not custom or lecture, not even the best”) abiding, except perhaps for this lull, this hum of a “valvèd voice” which could almost be, perhaps, a mantra—the sacred “Om”—more of a sound than a word. I find something very comforting in this idea that loafing could be a kind of sacred activity, especially when we are indoctrinated into this regime of enterprise, multi-tasking, and side-hustling (hustle, as in, “move it or lose it”—as though simply being, enjoying the moment, is some kind of modern sin against ambition, progress and capitalism.)
In this verse, we have the Self/Body and the Soul apparently in erotic union, as equals, neither abasing itself to the other while so much of literature (and scripture) before the modern era placed the Soul at the top of a definite hierarchy in which the body, and especially sex, were placed at a sinful depth. This is a remarkable moment in the 19th century, to imagine both the body lifted up to a state of grace, and the soul or spiritual self helped down from its pedestal to assume its place among the pleasures and delights of the embodied world.
I love that in that moment of the joining of the Self and the Soul, WW gives to us such a beautiful assurance of the divine in us, where “the hand of God is the promise of my own … the spirit of God is the brother of my own” and he goes on to identify with all people as his brothers and sisters, as well as all life—trees and ants alike—and that love is the “kelson” (a shipbuilding term) or foundational supporting structure of creation.
Mark Edmundson in “Song of Ourselves” talks quite a bit about the move from a hierarchical structure of society (the feudal structure of lord/subject, or “God” and sinners) to a dialectical one, in which the Self and the Soul, or the Body and the Divine are in conversation with each other, rather than one in service to the other, as represented in this invitation to the Soul to loaf in the grass with the body. He has some interesting comments:
“In a hierarchical world, the Soul might choose to stay in hiding to avoid humiliations. But in a world without superiors and inferiors, the Soul’s humane, democratic pride can stay intact … People may become more sympathetic, and also more creative, in a culture where they can sustain their dignity all the time. They will not have to surround themselves with defenses to fend off insults, implicit and overt, from others … Democracy, Whitman suggests, is where the Soul can be most free … We need to be reminded, and Whitman does remind us, that we in this democracy are brothers and sisters—all of us, from the most to the least. We may grow angry with each other. But we must never despise each other or hold each other in contempt … in a democracy, we must strive to be friends.”
A tall order, for sure—progress not perfection, of course. But also, this stands in such stark contrast to the current political currents around the world, where anger and denunciation seem to be getting more and more shrill. I’d love to believe that fascism is getting louder because it’s feeling more threatened than ever, but that remains to be seen.
I'm coming in a week late here, but so glad I didn't skip this juicy verse! I agree, I especially loved that second stanza. The lull...the hum of your valved voice. That melody-less sound that permeates all being. So many ancient sacred texts attribute life force energy itself with the quality of sound. That's what this makes me think of. The sound of unconditioned being. And then the image of the soul penetrating the body through the heartspace with its tongue! That's some potent imagery there. That boundless tongue simultaneously reaching up from the heart to the beard and down to the feet. The description is so tactile. You can feel the wetness of the tongue and the hair of the beard and the rough skin of the feet. It's all celebrated here instead of seen as vulgar. It really is a pioneering bit of poetry.
Yes, I loved that so much "the hum" - it's like a state of being both formed and unformed, not rushing to describe our experience, to categorize or place it in context - simply BE. Thanks Jenna!
I have to echo what Jenna said below - your take on this weeks verse helped me get a better handle on it.
I did think of the 2nd stanza in a similar vain to you in that “the hum of your valves voice” sounded to me like enjoying the simple things in life and the important things like our connection with those closest to us. But I can also see how it could represent mediation.
Closely interpreting a text like this is fun :)
I'm enjoying it too :) Your take on the valved voices also makes perfect sense - WW might have read Thoreau and the Bhagavad Gita, but he certainly never heard recordings of chanting and mantras, so this is probably much more of a personal association for me.
Here is a link to this week's verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-4
"Should" - I feel like the note for this week's verse is all the Shoulds of life, all the things other people are telling us are important, almost our duty to uphold, and to which WW is saying, "No thanks." This includes the "heroes" of every age, the people we are told to honor - the "Greats" - as though they were not also human beings - as though much time and money weren't spent on manipulating those images, their trappings and titles and divine rights - and as though their image in our popular imagination doesn't have more to do with our need for golden calves than who they actually were. I think WW would say the same of himself, our great bard: "Witness, and wait..." Attend, but do not worship. There is something so much more important at the heart of this poem than the lionization of the poet, which I think is true of art in general - and something all too easy to forget with our prizes and accolades.
I'm reminded of a popular metaphor of meditation, which says our thoughts are like a moving train that we watch from a point beside the track - notice each car as it is in front of you, and then let it pass - this is a way to imagine the self, not as an accumulation of all these individual cars and their contents, people, stuff, but as the constant passage into and then back out of our awareness. "These come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself." At this point I would actually be surprised if Whitman had not read Thoreau and some of Indian philosophy.
But another thing I'm reminded of is the concept of "keep your own side of the street clean" - this is popular in 12-step programs, and a reminder to worry about your own life (and sobriety) and let others worry about theirs. "I have no mockings or arguments..." I've personally found a great deal of wisdom in that, something along the lines of "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt..." But even more, it's a kind of curiosity, and humbleness: "Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it." Wondering... I like that, what a positive and open stance to take in life.
I really like your take on this week's verse. I struggled a bit with the verse myself until I read your comment here. For me, I read this list of everyday, mundane things we encounter and then WW's comment that "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am" and I balked. I don't think I subscribe to the notion that the essence or wholeness of what I am is apart from these things at all. Rather, it is a part OF these things. It almost seems like this verse is a departure from the previous where I felt WW was describing the sacredness of the physical world, but here is making a hierarchy where some life experiences are worth having/talking about and some are a waste of time and energy. But your comment brought me back around. And I especially love the image of the passing train as self. That is amazing and feels SO right! Incidentally, I have a post coming out in a few minutes about the self where I linked to your first comment in this thread. Now I wish I had also included your paragraph about the train. Something for next time! Thank you again for this journey! ❤️
Actually I think your insight is totally valid - I have often wondered (still wonder) if there is a certain looking down the nose at thoughts, because in my spiritual lexicon, every life, every moment, every POV is part of a unity, there is nothing wasted - it's hard to reconcile that with the "monsters" and the infliction of suffering, but that's a different argument. Our thinking and analyzing and so forth are what make things like art and science possible, so why should that be any less valid or important than the serenity of meditation or lovingkindness? My answer is that it's not, but the ability to step out of it, to not get so caught up in it that we can see no other pov or perspective - which leads to obsession, close mindedness, and yes, in some cases cruelty - is an important muscle, both emotional, mental, and spiritual, and leads us to the middle way we've heard so much about... ;) I quite agree it seems to be a sidestep by Uncle Walt, but maybe not, or maybe more will be revealed... Thank you so, so much for your lovely and insightful comment, Jenna! And thanks for the link! 🩵🩷🤍
I really like how the verse ends.
“ I have no mockings or arguments, ... just witness and wait”. I feel like there is a real power in that to be able to stand apart from our judgements and opinions of the world and just wait and see what will be.
And I think you illuminate that (and much more) very well in your comment, Troy. :)
I love that line too - I feel like the "mockings" of the world (and the arguments, for that matter) have gotten out of hand... :) Thanks Michael!
I couldn’t agree more. :)
Here is a link to this week’s verse: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-3
I had a vision while reading this verse of life unending, as if the child is just a limb of the parent—the same life with fresh eyes, a new day—the NOW day—and though the links in the chain (of DNA?) may separate, they remain a part of a greater whole, and become a part again on the other side. It is sometimes hard to remember that, despite however difficult and trying it can sometimes be, life is an unbroken chain of birth, joining, and procreation going back to the first proto-cells—we are all a success story, and a single, great family—it really is a knitting together of life.
I’m fascinated by Ed Folsom’s comment on the second stanza:
“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
“Now” is repeated four times, and refers to inception (beginning, birth) and “youth or age” (the stages of life) and perfection (now, Nirvana?) and finally, heaven or hell, our final, illusory destination. Whitman is saying that perfection, everything we need, resides in the eternal NOW, there is nothing after now (because once we arrive, there we are again—Now,) nor anything better—right now we have everything we need to live in perfect happiness and delight. I love this. I would say, too, that in all of his reading, I wouldn’t be surprised if WW read about and found inspiration in Eastern philosophy and Buddhism (as I recall, Thoreau and Emerson both read from Eastern texts.)
In this verse, we are also talking again about the unity of body and soul, the material and the divine by my way of thinking, and how “lacks one lacks both”—they are knitted together, these two seemingly different states - in actuality, they are so deeply intertwined, we are mistaken in rejecting either, or of elevating one over the other. I think this is at the heart of his “democracy” really, this rejection of hierarchy and exclusion, and his inviting us to instead cast off our assumptions and arrogance, and embrace the unifying experience of the now.
When I was younger, I would read things from eastern texts or spiritual teachers that said things along the lines of: “everything you need is here now” or “everything you seek is within” and at the time — not being in a good place within myself — those comments bothered me. It just didn’t feel that simple. But as I’ve gotten a bit older and gotten to a better place within myself, those ideas are starting to make more sense to me. And to tie this into WW verse, I have a feeling he is echoing the same sort of sentiment as those comments.
Thanks Troy :)
I know exactly what you mean - I'm sometimes troubled by the sense that what is working for me now (sober and distressingly middle-aged 😂) would not have worked when I was a kid, vulnerable and uncertain. But I've come to think that's a fruitless endeavor - we do the best with what we've got, and right now, I have the means to pursue peace, and I've worked hard to get here so I'm not going to say "No thanks" just because it wasn't always so. 🕊️Thank YOU, Michael! 🤍
I couldn’t agree more. We do the best we can and I think we get better at appreciating what we get :)
I had a vision while reading this one too. Or, actually, I recalled a vision I had had a couple years back. I saw the earth, and all the living beings emerge from it--poke out of it--for a time, then sink back in. This perpetual undulation of life expressing out, then going back in. Much like the earth breathing. Breathing out life forms, then breathing them back in. And what goes back in, nourishes the whole. Nothing was ever truly separate or distinct, just emerged a little bit, but still connected to the whole before returning back to it. I love that this verse reminded me of that vision!
I also thought it was ingenious of WW, in this verse on his maybe not-so-favorable opinion on duality, to begin it by being in opposition to the talkers. Even in his preference, and his insightful wisdom on nowness and unity, he demonstrates that duality is also (and paradoxically) an inescapable part of the oneness.
I love that he speaks to the importance of the body, the seen, the immanent, in a time when spirituality was all about transcendence. And, even more so, as you pointed out, that they are knitted together. He was writing about the 'both-and' principle without naming it as such. Do you know if he studied Thomas Aquinas?
Thank you for continuing to host this, Troy! I so look forward to my dose every week. ❤️
I really don't know, although Aquinas is one of those writers that I think someone reading and educating themselves back in the early 19th century would have heard of and been attracted to - one of those classical writers people read right on up until our modern age. (I've never read him, but I did a survey of philosophy in college which included Kant and Descartes, who he apparently influenced.) Anyway, now I'm hot to get a biography of WW if one can be found, I'm sure there's a good one out there, and I do love reading about people's lives when I'm also studying their work. And its fascinating what you say about immanence v. transcendence - I'm really not sure I understand the difference between the two at least in the context of Emerson's historical movement, more study needed (will we ever find the time to pursue all these different avenues of inquiry? :)
I love the vision you mention - poking out but not separated, people and the world, the earth's breath. I have often thought about how "of" the earth we are, completely - but then I'm also reminded too by science shows which explain that all of the heavier elements besides hydrogen/helium are created in stars through fusion, and so we are literally star stuff, born from destruction.
So glad you're here, Jenna, I'm fascinated to see what more Uncle Walt has in store for us... ⭐💛😃
You can read the second verse of SoM here, and listen to the audio file:
https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-2
Hello again, moving on to the 2nd verse of “Song of Myself” and this one starts out with a really interesting metaphor:
“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.”
What are the perfumes? Books, we are told, by both Ed Folsom at UofIowa and Mark Edmundson. I’m often not great at interpreting these sorts of poetic metaphors so I appreciate it’s just being spelled out for me, and apparently, in an early notebook WW explicitly said that literature was a perfume in the sense that it fills our minds with a pervasive—and hard to resist—way of perceiving.
I think this definitively answers Jeffrey Streeter’s comment from last week about whether WW was widely read—definitely yes. He loves reading, apparently, but he has a healthy skepticism for it. The views expressed by others are not without their bias, but WW is saying we can find the unvarnished truth of the world by using our own senses, and goes on in a passage which invokes all of them, and some erotic imagery too (“love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine…A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms.”) It’s the undistilled perception through the body (his “respiration and inspiration”) which is the true source of all we know, and all of the books that went before must be seen for what they are, “second or third hand.”
I want to take a moment to also point out another possibility, and specifically, why he might have chosen the notion of perfumes to describe the literary tradition—possibly by pointing to that greatest of traditions/dogmas, the Bible. At that time (and possibly still, in the Western world) if there is only one book in a home, that book is probably a Bible, and I wonder if the perfume might not also be alluding to the incense of churches? His parents were Quaker, apparently, so it’s hard to know if he was even familiar with the smoking pendulums employed in Catholic churches, but he was a pretty smart guy. It just seems to me he’s employing here a trope very similar to the break from the Catholic church represented in the Protestant reformation—dispense with the middlemen, go direct to the source, only in this case, he’s even throwing the Bible with its “perfumes” out the window, and then throwing off his clothes and running out the door naked, no filters whatsoever. “Ultimately, Whitman wants to show us how to live a righteous life that is not based on commandments and constraints.” (ME, SoO)
One other point I found really interesting in Mark Edmundson’s book returns to the idea of democracy. “Most writing up until 1855 had been feudal: that is, it celebrated the aristocratic, the rich, the extraordinary. Whitman devotes himself to writing about the common and everyday: that’s the kind of poetry a democracy needs. We’re done with kings, done with pontentates of all sorts…He’s an American Adam—a useful term put forward by the critic R.W.B. Lewis—who wants to begin life all over.” And: “To be naked is to jettison identifying class markers.” (ME, SoO)
This is fascinating, and to me, bolsters the idea that a priest is just another kind of aristocrat, elevating or interceding between us and the divine (and in the case of the Pope, an actual king.) But more specifically, as a writer, I am struck by how much literature indeed is concerned with the wealthy, the powerful, or the extraordinary even today—the new aristocracy of democracies, the super-wealthy and famous, or just as often, the super-human: vampires, spies, super- and action heroes, wildly talented martial artists whose skills defy physics.
We continue to idolize these qualities the way we conduct our politics—trickle-down, all of the attention, money and importance lavished at the manufactured tip of a human pyramid, while the plebs at the base are gun downed, literally and figuratively, just so much fuel for the heroic lives of the privileged and self-important few.
WW was urging us to dispense with all of this nonsense 169 years ago. We are incredibly slow learners.
Just as last time, your comment and WW verse has left me pondering many things — which I think is one of the great values of art.
As for what I think WW by perfumes, it feels so hard to know, I do like the idea of it being something as simple as the different ‘fragrances’ of life — but that’s just a random thought. I feel it makes much more sense that it was about literature or the bible.
Thanks for making me think Troy :)
You know, it really could be the many ways of looking at life, of considering other people's perspectives, and I think that is one of the joys of living and community. I'm no poetry expert but I think, just like in fiction, sometimes underlying meanings and themes present themselves after the fact and are just as valid as what the explicit, conscious intention might have been. :)
Thanks for popping round, Michael!
Yes, I agree. I also like when the meaning is metaphorical or vague as it allows different readers to interpret the meaning in a way that speaks to them. :)
This verse felt so intimate to me. Like I was there with WW in his naked wildness and not even his own words stood between us. The idea of perfumes being books makes sense (and I LOVE your take on perfumes being related to clergy). I wonder, too, about perfumes being planks, or the structure itself of houses and rooms. To be sheltered can be intoxicating. That sense of security is alluring, but it is a distilled version of life. Being in our safe structures, reading about divinity, versus being out in it, nakedly merging with the divine. I'm really loving this journey, Troy! Thank you so much for generously guiding it! ♥️♥️
I love that idea, Jenna - in a "house of God" sense, even, as though WW is saying we must dispense with everything that comes between us and the immediacy of our naked selves and the cosmos. "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it..." -Willy Wonka 😘🎩🍭 (Which makes me want to find out whether WW and WW were somehow related, though as Roald Dahl was a Brit, and a bit of plum, probably not... 😂)
I love this, Troy! God, it’s true we need connection and consensus.
Ain't it the truth. Thanks Holly! Glad to have you here 💛
I wish you would go on! First and perhaps foremost, “I call it “GG” for secret reasons”, I adore you. Secondly, “is an invocation of a combined spiritual element between the self (my self, your self, our selves) and a simple delight in, and reverence for, life.” made me fall even more deeply in love with this poem, so thank you. I also took this opening to be speaking to a mystical view of existence, separation being an illusion, the universe and everything in it being one thing, and nothing goes unaffected by anything else, whether perceived or not. I found myself pausing on ‘assume’, my brain always goes to the ‘suppose to be the case’ meaning, but here I assume(!) WW to be meaning ‘what I take on, you shall take on’, again reflecting that view, maybe even alluding to morality and karma, but at least saying that ‘my’ joy, my sins, my fears and delights are all equally ‘yours’. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on ‘as good’, in that last line, if you have any…
Thanks again for doing, my dear. It’s my / your / our joy 💗
And I adore you dear Chloe... Yes there is a comment on the WhitmanWeb which I made note of about "assume" and I think it could be a question of equivalence, me=you=Universal Soul, and the "as good" like "one as good as the other." But the comment said assume could be another meaning, assuming a role, or a form, and I rather like that - as though this is a kind of conjuring of ideas and forms, an experiment in identity, and in a sense asking us to try these ideas on for size with him. I'm sure more will be revealed!
Oh, wonderful! Thank you. Yes, of course re 'as good'. And that's so interesting about assume as identity or idea...I love reading it as an invitation, in that way.
I haven't done this with a poem in well over a decade and I had completely forgotten how much I enjoy it, and you chose the most perfect poem. So, thank you, really, I am so enjoying this.
Thank you, Troy for this lovely initiative! It's always wonderful to read great poetry, and Whitman is magnificent at his best, as here.
I guess my starting point for thinking about a poem is to consider why it's a poem and not a few lines of prose with similar content. Put another way, what is it doing that only a poem can do? The opening line, which you highlight below, gives us a clue, with its strong rhythm (essentially, blank verse) with its echo of MIlton, which is picked up by the use of "sing" (Paradise Lost begins with "sing" as arguably the main verb though it's an imperative), but we have to wait for line 6 for it to arrive. This suggests to me that there is a conscious or unconscious sense of poetic legacy here. In this case, it's also a point of departure, because Whitman will celebrate himself and sing himself. He's not asking a muse (as Milton) and he's not describing the Fall of Man (as in Paradise Lost). I don't know whether Whitman had read Milton, but on this evidence, I'd say he had. And he's breaking away from tradition while acknowledging it and putting himself in relation to it. Which is very energising!
I also note Whitman's use of "m" and "s" sounds in the opening lines as well as the repetition of "myself" (with a different meaning). It's beautifully crafted; how he gives emphasis to the meaning of the key words through these sound clusters. And then there's his intriguing use of the word "assume," with its various meanings all in play here.
As you say, there's a lot going on in this rich and subtle poem - just in those opening lines. Thank you for the chance/permission to indulge myself in this way! I hope I haven't overdone it. :)
Not at all! I could read a whole volume of your musings on poetry - your post about Larkin's Whitsun Weddings was a bloody delight...
I think you must be right that WW read Milton - as most autodidacts, he probably read widely, and Mark Edmundson mentioned he read Emerson extensively (and went on to invent the book blurb by quoting Emerson's response to Leaves, without permission. 😂)
Also worth noting that the original 1855 edition did not include that second clause of the first line - "and sing myself" came later - WhitmanWeb is using the 1892/93 edition. Edmundson's book includes the 1855 version, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Perhaps as this project wends on, I'll weigh in on the differences.
Thanks for stopping by, Jeffrey, you are most welcome here! 🌟
Ha, a whole volume of my musings! Be careful what you wish for 😂
I didn't know the story WW and the invention of the blurb. Delightful (even if sometimes, reading certain kinds of blurb, I almost wish he hadn't..).
Yes, "blurbspeak" can get a bit purple for me at times...
You can read the first verse of SoM here, and listen to the audio file: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-1
Thanks for stopping by my - *OUR* - little project. I hope you will get as much out of this deep-dive into "Song of Myself" (SoM) as I do. Some important notes re: Walt Whitman (WW) before I delve a bit deeper.
Walt Whitman had no formal education. He could read, wrote fiction and journalism pieces, and was a typesetter. When he self-published his first book of poetry "Leaves of Grass" in 1855 - which contained the first, untitled version of SoM - he had been working as a carpenter framing houses in Brooklyn. “Scholars say that Song is the first significant instance of free verse,” says Mark Edmundson in “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy.” (ME/SoO for citations - I have the Kindle version, so I can’t note page numbers.)
As mentioned in the first verse, he had just turned 37, and the American “experiment” - a nation with a constitutional democracy for the first time since the ancient Greeks - was not 80 years old. The formal discovery of the atom - though also deriving from an ancient Greek precursor - was even newer.
This is the ground from which Walt Whitman emerged as one of the most respected and beloved American poets.
I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the significance and legacy of Walt or his other poetry - this isn’t a university course, and I’m hardly a scholar. I’ll try to stick each week to the relevant verse, and any details or bits of information that I glean from U. of Iowa’s WhitmanWeb project, or Mark Edmundson’s book - or other books or relevant research I pick up along the way - will mostly be sprinkled in to help me elucidate a point about how the poem and its ideas affect me.
By all means, I hope YOU will feel free to discuss anything about WW, his poetry, your own insights and research, and I will do my best to respond and acknowledge the contributions of everyone who drops in.
I CELEBRATE MYSELF…?
I just want to make note of those first three words, because this poem is all about identity, and the dichotomy between I and You is significant (“I” is the first word of the poem, and “you” the last.) But celebrate? Here are some words associated with “celebrate” according to WordHippo.com, my go-to for synonyms and such: Joyous. Appreciation. Honor. Triumphant. Elation. Jubilation. Pleasure. Satisfaction. Also: To perform a (usually religious) rite or ceremony.
What I’m seeing here is a declaration of love, from WW toward himself, of course, but in another sense - and significantly, in the evolving relationship between “I” and “You” throughout the poem - it is an invocation of a combined spiritual element between the self (my self, your self, our selves) and a simple delight in, and reverence for, life.
I have to admit that it is deeply moving to me to think this poem is a convocation of love and life, of a spiritual component to each of us and our birthright as living beings. Much of my personal spiritual journey and sobriety is built on an attempt to understand where “spirit” resides, and I am heartened to find in SoM a very powerful declaration that “God” - or goddess, deity, spirit, unity, higher power, whatever you call it (I call it “GG” for secret reasons) - is alive in every one of us.
BUT WHO IS THE “YOU” in the first line?
It’s tempting to think that “you” is the reader, simple enough, and obviously he is trying to draw us in to his ritual. But Mark Edmundson believes it’s Walt’s own Soul, which he invites in the next line. “The Soul - at least Whitman’s Soul - is uneasy about entering the world as it is. Yet to Whitman, the Soul belongs to the world. It is rightly one with the physical-every atom that belongs of the Self belongs to the Soul as well, or at least it could.” (ME,SoO)
I find this a really interesting interpretation, inviting a oneness between the body and the soul, the spiritual and material worlds, which I wholeheartedly accept and agree with - to me, they are two sides of the same coin, Being and Transcendence, the same essence in different aspects.
But I’m also still stuck on the idea that he IS speaking to the reader, and I don’t think we must necessarily say the Reader and the Soul are mutually exclusive. Perhaps - bear with me - Being is the differentiated form of a universally shared Transcendence, and when he refers to “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” he means a shared, universal Soul expressed through the multiplicity and interconnectedness of the material world.
Ed Folsom’s WhitmanWeb entry mentions WW’s abandonment “...of the two main things that separate people, that create animosity, jealousy, and war—beliefs and possessions: “what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to you as good belongs to me.” At every level of our being, we are incessantly transferring and exchanging materials, ideas, emotions, affections. The atoms that yesterday composed a living cow or a growing plant today are part of us, as the eternal atoms of the universe continue their nonstop interaction and rearrangement.”
This echoes the Buddhist concept of eternal change - birth, life, death, rebirth - and how the spiritual path leads beyond dogma (“Creeds and schools in abeyance”) and the illusions of security, wealth, and power, to a oneness, an egalitarianism within individuality, which sweeps away accidents of birth and fortune (an artificial aristocracy) to arrive at a true democratic vision: we are all, eternally, One - no better and no less than each other, because we all spring from the same undifferentiated spiritual ground.
I could go on, but I won’t. I’ll try to be a little more succinct in the future - no promises - feel free to skim. There’s so much here, it’s so dense and rich, but I would love to hear from YOU. ~ T. xo
Wow, Troy! I don’t have the words (which is a change) to express how moved I was not just by your comment, but also by how deeply you have read into Whitman’s poem, and how much meaning you have drawn from it (obviously mixing it with your own understandings). It is also amazing to me, as so much of what you just said — although articulated better than I think I could say it — is very similar to the spiritual views I hold. I have had experiences — which I intend to write about one day — which have made me believe in a sort of universal oneness. And so, it was lovely to hear you express that in your own way. Especially with this line: “Being is the differentiated form of a universally shared Transcendence” — I mean, wow! So well said.
Also I did think when I was reading your comment on who the ‘you’ is in Whitman’s line — maybe it’s both the reader and his soul... Especially if were all connected in this way. I do think you may have been saying that as well, but I just thought I’d add it in. :)
That's exactly in line with that unity - like looking at the same diamond through different facets... I'm realizing too that his philosophy syncs with so much I've thought before. I hope you will write about yours...
I'm purposely not reading ahead because I'm really trying to let each week's verse sit and marinate in my head, really looking forward to how it unfolds - thank you so much for being here Michael... ⭐👍🌟
I definitely will, it’s on my list of things to write about.
Glad to be here :)
Ok, so there were about ten mic drops in this comment. I'm not even sure what I want to address first. I felt like all of it was speaking right to me about my current circumstances. Firstly, I have to admit to never having read Whitman. So I went and read just the first stanza of Song of Myself (and fell instantly in love). I celebrate myself. Well, I could've stopped there and my life would have been infinitely changed for the better. I celebrate myself. I don't, but I should. And now I'm going to.
And then this part here: "At every level of our being, we are incessantly transferring and exchanging materials, ideas, emotions, affections. The atoms that yesterday composed a living cow or a growing plant today are part of us, as the eternal atoms of the universe continue their nonstop interaction and rearrangement.” I am literally in the middle of writing a post for next week about the container of self and, basically, this is it in a nutshell.
I'm so excited to go on this Whitman journey with you, Troy! I wish I could get notifications for new comments here, but I'll set myself a reminder to check back. Thanks for doing this!
There will be a link in each of my weekly posts so you can pop in in Fridays. I was thinking EXACTLY the same thing looking at your torus and reading your post today, Jenna, it's incredibly resonant... Thanks for being here! ⭐💛🤗
I told my friend what I was doing with SoM and he was like, "Oh! Kinda like that Julia Child movie... 'Julie & Julia...'" Hmmm... Maybe some next step will emerge along the way, I'm staying open to all the possibilities presented by the reading and the comments and the spirit of Uncle Walt. 🤍