Ever love...ever the sobbing liquid of life (pt. 2 Song of Myself)

The first poem in Whitman's book, "Song of Myself'" (said to be the most popular of those in the book) is a poem where Whitman attempts to dissect himself as a person and also takes on the enormous task of defining the world as well. Whitman uses eloquent language and story-like depictions withing the book to further explain his understanding of the world. This poem clearly shows what kind of time period Whitman was living in; women were looked at as domesticated figures, slaves were looked at as lesser citizens, and the country was beginning to divide as the Civil War approached. The first portion of the poem is where Whitman really focuses on himself, he asks himself questions such as, "What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?" (Whitman, 83). In true transcendental fashion he connects himself with nature and adds the well known Thoreau-esque opinion that one must go into nature and live amongst the wild to truly discover oneself and ones place in the world, he shows this in the quote, "I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals...they are so placid and self-contained"(Whitman, 105). This quote is ironic seeing as the general belief is that the animals are the ones that are wild, savage, and beastly. Whitman projected belief is that we humans are the ones who are the real savages. As the poem moves on Whitman circles about the difficult topic of the world. He speaks of God, humanity, and even as specific as America. This is where you begin to sense what time period Whitman is living through. Whitman, like many other writers, attempts to capture himself and his world around him in his own light with this poem. His attempt is pretty successful in my opinion and I completely understand why this poem is so popular.

All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.

In the first quarter of Walt Whitman's, "Leaves of Grass" Whitman writes poetry. In this complete book filled with a total of 12 poems. For this months independent reading I bought the original 1855 version, however; over the years after the first edition was released Whitman revised the book to contain almost 400 different poems. This first blog entry includes the introduction- which in itself holds words to be thought over, and also the first portion of the first poems in the book, "Songs of Myself". Whitman was a a transcendentalist writer which means he focuses a lot of his poetry on beliefs on nature and the human race and the beauty it holds. At first his poetry and diction confused me, I was skimming over most of it and it really isn't the kind of book where it is structured to be able to be described in a blog entry. It really is more of a book with ideas and hypothesis which he formulates withing his poetry which is how i plan on writing it. After rereading the pages that in the beginning puzzled me began to make sense. In his introduction Whitman writes of what true poetry is made out of, this is where I got the quote which is the title of the blog. He believes that the poet has a strong connection to nature (which I presume he holds true for himself as well) this is shown in the quote, "...folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects...they expect him to indicate the path between the reality and their souls" (Whitman, 21). Whitman defines the poet as a man who holds a different connection with the world around him, in some cases he defines this connection as a better one. I realize that this first blog entry is mainly focused around the introduction to Whitman's book, however; I believe that without a strong understanding of the introduction it is harder to dissect and understand what Whitman means in his poetry in the following pages.