Leaves of Grass

Earlier this summer I happened upon a Walt Whitman exhibit at the New York Public Library. The space was pretty small, but smartly arranged to pack a lot of information. This encounter inspired me to read Leaves of Grass, and provided me with a metaphor for the experience. Leaves of Grass unfolds like a vast, labyrinthine art gallery, with the reader pausing in front of each work, its masterful employment of language depicting scenes ranging from grand vistas to diminutive vignettes. One might not always understand everything that's being conveyed, or perhaps one comes away with a unique interpretation, but appreciation of the work, its musicality, happens regardless.

Leaves of Grass is deeply personal, sort of an autobiography put to verse, revealing Whitman's character (or how he viewed himself) in all its dimensions. Essentially arranged chronologically, the poems begin with a youthful, full-of-vigor (and so horny!) Whitman singing of himself, with a touch of arrogance that is not off-putting, but rather inspirational for one's own affirmations. Here was a man whose lust for life knew no bounds, exploring the world before him and always striving to make real human connections wherever he went. In his middle years he cared for the wounded (on both sides) in the Civil War, an experience which deepened his humanism, and as he says later, made his work have any meaning. And finally, as the sweet bird-songs of sunset, he warbles his elder years, reflecting on the life he lived.

If there's a constant thread running through his poems, aside from himself, it's America. Whitman sings of the common man (and woman), busy at building a new nation from the ground up. He writes of farmers, mechanics, laborers of all kinds, folk bustling the streets of Manhattan. Here's a nation with its best years ahead of it, now that we've achieved a more perfect rebirth via the Civil War, and begun industrialization, and left the feudalism of our ancestors behind for the aspirations of democracy.

It may not always make sense to read books of poetry cover-to-cover, but in this case I believe it is essential, for grasping Whitman as a human, for grasping his view of the world as it rapidly evolved, for letting his musical verse flow through you.