Woodlief's comments on "Song of Myself" in response to CONNECT discussion

Your points about Whitman are quite good. I do detect some problems dealing with that Romantic concept of "self" that we've encountered over and over. Even though you may intellectually accept the paradox--that to know one's self is to have entry to the Self, or to universal truths--it is still difficult to accept when you are assaulted by multiple "I's"! These Romantics can come on very strongly.

In a sense, though, this "I" (and Thoreau's and especially Poe's) is a fictitious persona, a projection of the author in a particular role--that of "the poet," in Whitman's case. Emerson talks about "the poet"; Whitman enacts "the poet" in his poem. That poet has many similarities--a liberating god, representative man, etc. Whitman's poet becomes our representative, and he is the one who takes the risk (and it is one psychologically) of plunging into all kinds of experiences, even war and the crucifixion, embracing all, good and evil, enthusiastically, and endangering his own identity. As readers we are safer; rather than having to experience the full impact of these emotional experiences, we can experience it vicariously. At least twice in the poem Whitman almost "loses" it, feeling empathetically so intensely that he almost goes over the brink and loses himself. (Remember Emerson's mystic experience in Nature when he says that he was "glad to the brink of fear"?)

There are repeated words in this poem that, put together, say a lot about its direction. They are "verge," "urge," "surge" and "merge." Try putting them together in various combinations; for example, Whitman is celebrating the "surge" to the "verge" of the "urge" to "merge." OK, stop laughing--I'm serious. Aside from the very visceral sound of these words (note what it does to your stomach muscles if you say the words vigorously!) which is like the body speaking (Whitman's "barbaric yawp"?), there is meaning in these words he loves. For he does keep trying to merge with all of the "not-me," with nature, men and women of all kinds, and especially experiences of all kinds. By taking them into himself as he does, metaphorically he transcends himself, becoming the poet and then, in a sense, a god. But in the process Walt Whitman the person is challenged; his identity is undermined as he merges. Whether he actually succeeds in both losing and gaining himself, and carrying the reader along vicariously on his journey, is maybe debatable in personal terms, but in poetic terms....probably. Sometimes, though, one wishes he wouldn't keep saying over and over what he is accomplishing, and wish that he would just go ahead and DO IT. [that's probably my personal caveat. I do prefer poetry that shows rather than tells, and he tells a lot!]

Another difficulty in reading Whitman is dealing with what he says about the body and sex. Once a student declared that the point of the poem was "you should have sex with everyone and enjoy it"! Well, I don't think so.... but that seemed a perfectly valid interpretation for him. (this was before AIDS, etc....) Whitman is very frank (most unVictorian) about bodily functions, especially sex...and yes, he does not limit himself to heterosexuality. He loves everyone--metaphorically. For he is using the body metaphorically, albeit graphically. In the famous stanza 5 we have a total union--in sexual terms--of body and soul. That established, he is now able to speak of the soul by speaking of the body, for they are truly united. The poet must not only see everything and everyone, but he must TOUCH it, and eventually even BECOME it. And that is basically the structure of the poem, as he moves from seeing to touching to becoming, and then hands it all over to the reader to go on his way with a new vision, with vicarious experiences of union. Nevertheless, you can imagine how embarrassed Emerson was when Whitman quoted him on the cover of the second edition of Leaves of Grass as saying, "I welcome you at the beginning of a great career." In return, Whitman said, "I was simmering, simmering, simmering, and you brought me to a boil." Emerson thought he'd found his POET. Unfortunately, for Emerson anyway, this was the edition which introduced the infamous Calamus poems, with a great deal of rather explicit homosexual imagery. Oh well! I'll say this for Emerson; blush though he might have, he never backed down.

What about the style of this poem? --no rhyme, none of that traditional regular stuff. This is free verse, one with rhythms of its own--and American poetry has never recovered from being freed from metrical traditions by this poem! But as Will says, there IS form here. Look at all the parallelism, the repetitions, for example! And look at all the times when the sound mirrors the sense in a most organic Romantic voice: "I love the lull of your valved voice", says the body to the soul. There are patterns, and of such patterns is poetry made, rhyming or not. This is organic poetry as Emerson described, where the form is created from inside, growing naturally from the ideas. There is method in this rhythmic expansiveness.

Well, I seemed to have talked about the poet, his function, his subject matter, and his form. What about the reader? (note that all of these directly correspond to Emerson's "The Poet") Whitman isn't very subtle about what he wants to happen to the reader: he wants him/her to be transformed, to see the world differently now that he/she has seen it through the poet's eyes. He wants the reader to go beyond him, find new words to express his/her new ways of seeing. And with that, the reader will be an "athlete" and will "destroy the teacher," the poet who has taught him how to see sympathetically. In short, he/she has been liberated by the poet into new language and new experience.

These Romantics don't want much, do they! Just to transform the very lives of their readers! You can't get more American than that. Does Whitman succeed? He says he does; you might disagree, but on some level, as he says, he may always be at your ear, whispering, offering experiences, and some you may never quite forget..... maybe.