FOREWORD FOREWORD Do I contradict myself Very well then I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes words curious words written by the son of a Brooklyn carpenter Walt Whitman 1819 92 spent only five years in school But reading teaching practic ing journalism and mingling with the masses left him with a profound idea Poetry must break away from the old European pattern identified by strict staid adherence to rhyme and to metrical forms and a much-too-confining notion of place Embracing the Emersonian view that America is a poem in our eyes Whitman believed that the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem He scoffed at verse distilled from other verse rejected fiction and romance in favor of what was truly genuine and sought to discover in the common man and woman the temper and toil of their lives In 1854 Whitman returned to his parents home to write his masterpiece Leaves of Grass Incorporating new poems into later versions of the book he strug gled most of his life to make the public appreciate its virtues His poetry eschewed high-flown language for unglamorous everyday speech and colloquialisms The book’s emotional intensity and intuitive power were completely radical at the time of its appearance Ralph Waldo Emerson hailed the book as the most extraordi nary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed Walt Whitman was the first poet to write extensively in free verse but his critics outnumbered the early admirers of his liberating lines Scandalized by the poet’s sexual frankness some called him amoral egotistical Bohemian anti intellectual or simply infantile in his celebration of the human body His attackers considered his poetry formless and distasteful Perhaps it is enough to say that our preeminent American poet was far ahead of his time for what was revolutionary to readers yesterday seems commonplace today As Ezra Pound once said of Whitman He is America J Patrick Lewis United States Children’s Poet Laureate 2011-13 5
INTRODUCTION It is I you hold and who holds you I spring from the pages into your arms wrote Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass a collection of poetry that is regarded as one of the world’s literary masterpieces In his poems and in his life Whitman celebrated the human spirit and the human body he sang the praises of democracy and chronicled the mar vel of technological progress His direct speech like writing style and his frank celebration of sensuality shocked many of his contemporaries But Whitman persisted despite the criticism his unorthodox work received He spent more than three decades writing revising and expanding Leaves of Grass and his influence on the develop ment of modern American poetry has been both profound and enduring 6 Walt Whitman
SONG OF MYSELF Section 1 I celebrate myself and sing myself And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you I loafe and invite my soul I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass My tongue every atom of my blood form’d from this soil this air Born here of parents born here from parents the same and their parents the same I now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin Hoping to cease not till death Creeds and schools in abeyance Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are but never forgotten I harbor for good or bad I permit to speak at every hazard Nature without check with original energy From Inscriptions Leaves of Grass 7
