Song of Myself

Today is the birthday of Walt Whitman, that "sweaty-toothed madman," one of the earthiest of poets, a contemporary of Thoreau, both of them most often lumped with Emerson and others in the "Transcendentalists" of the mid-19th century in America. As a nature lover and a wannabe poet, Whitman is one of the "gods" for a guy like me...and so I celebrate him on his day.

His Leaves of Grass was a revolutionary work upon the poetic landscape at the time of its publication. Whitman changed the face of modern poetry. He changed the way poets did poetry from his time onward. Almost every poet since Whitman owes him a debt, acknowledged or not. His poetic descendants come down to today, even to another voice of the earth such as Gary Snyder.

Whitman was an earthy poet, but he also wrote unabashedly of his innermost passions and struggles. He admittedly "celebrated" himself. That is not a style that this reserved Scandinavian tending toward self-deprecation is comfortable with, but 'ol Walt could pull it off as few ever have. Here is an excerpt from one of his more famous pieces, the Song of Myself:

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
hair,

This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the side of a rock has.

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

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

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

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

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

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones....

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.

A "song of myself;" in a sense, is that not sort of what a blog is?

Here's a video bonus for you from one of my all time favorite films, in which Uncle Walt figures prominently. Enjoy: