"Song of Myself"

I am reading Walt Whitman for my post-Civil War American Literature class, the crux of which is the Whitman vs. Emily Dickinson approach to literature. Ever since I stole a beautiful copy of Leaves of Grass from my high school's library after graduation (a parting gift to myself, if you will), I have taken it up and devoured it, in pieces, from time to time.

Two years ago in New York I would stay up all night drinking wine and reading it aloud with my best friend.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the L-rd,

A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose?

Last year in the mountains I fell in love with a man who also loved Whitman, and we would stay up late in my room taking turns reading our favorite lines.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?  

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

So much flows from the memories of those nights that I cannot possibly consider them anything but vital to my education. But this time I am alone with Whitman, up late at night in a room that I have crafted intentionally to be full of things that I love to look at, and books that I love to read, and colors that I love to feel. And Walt reads a little differently tonight. He reads a little more like me.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break!

I am resigning myself to the lack of scholasticism in this post because of the running conversation in my other English class, Intro to English Studies, for which I am reading Plato (at dinner the other night I was irreversibly convinced of my own immortality over carrots and hummus) and Sir Philip Sidney and Archibauld MacLeish. Poetry is inseparable from the study of literature, from the study of anything, but I have to say that I agree with MacLeish when he writes,

A poem should not mean/
But be.



So I will let Whitman stand as is-- alone and full of himself (and all things).