Song of Myself

For the great majority of its early life, poetry was as much a science as it was an art. There were many cardinal rules which were never to be questioned, much less broken. And yet, like in all fields of the human experience, progress is only made by those intrepid souls who are willing to question the status quo. The instigators of change have always been men who had a higher regard for progress and truth than they did comfort or tradition. In their day, these men were often labeled as heretics…

It starts out in a conversation with a child asking what grass is. The line of answer is "the beautiful uncut hair of graves" (Whitman 2747). When we die, we are buried in the ground. We are returned, in a sense, from whence we came. God did form Adam, the first man, from the earth. William Cullen Bryant says in "Thanatopsis," "earth that nourishes thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again" (Bryant 2673). The earth has now become our home, our resting-place, our lap,…

which professes the priesthood of all believers. He did not follow this religion as an adult. According to his doctrine, “No restrictions whatever should be placed upon an individual’s religious convictions.” In Song of Myself #48, in the first Stanza: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” shows how he does not discriminate on others’ ideas and religions but rather has his own perception which challenges…

Three Unique Writers Reforming Worldview “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass” (Whitman, v. 1-5). For many eras, authors and poets, like Walt Whitman have attempted to capture what it means to be an individual as a universal theme, and what it means to be an American. Multitudes of writers have come close to…

Finding Self, Whitman’s Way: The One Among the Crowd “The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day; The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme-myself disintegrated, everyone disintegrated, yet part of the scheme” (Whitman. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.). Walt Whitman was a graceful, yet outlaw poet that pushed the boundaries ink and paper. Whitman’s works were a journey of finding self through the natural world and his relation to the world, along with cleaver wording that…

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two writers during the late 19th and early 20th century. They are often referred to the founders of American poetry. Both writers have many similarities and differences from each other, but neither of them can be imitated through their style. They have influenced many during and long after the Romantic era of literature. A common theme through each of their following poems is that some aspects of nature cannot be taught or learned, but only understood through…

In this free verse poem, “A Song,” Walt Whitman is describing how great he believes America really is by using metaphors and by adding a touch of repetition, imagery, and personification to give the reader a warm and fuzzy feeling. The first line in this poem emotes a powerful feeling. By writing about “making the continent indissoluble,” Whitman is creating a backdrop for the rest of the poem. It allows the reader to understand that the words that follow include colossal ideas about a nation…

In Whitman's “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” he paints a verbal picture of appreciating learning from experience. In lines one and two, he inundates you with heavy words like proofs, figures, charts, and diagrams that are all very strong and authoritively describing his learning experience in a lecture room. He grows "tired" and "sick" of this sense of confinement. Feeling captive and stagnant in this conventional learning environment, he longs to, instead of just reading the facts and…

“Miracles” is a poem that stresses that everything is in life is a miracle. From A cubic inch of space to animals feeding in the field are miracles. Every second in life is a miracle and some people don’t understand that. 2. The poet is addressing the world of what miracles are to him. It begins with a rhetorical question of,” Who makes much of a miracle?” The author shares his ideas of what miracles are after he says,” I know of nothing but miracles.” I know it is in the author's point of…

Pre-Agricultural Religion Here are three pre-agricultural examples of religion. The Upanishads, Gobekli Tepe and the Ainu/Jomon tradition. All date roughly 14,000 years ago. Dawn of the Upanishads “Like radii of the same circle, all these traditions indicate a common center… long before the India of the Vedas, before the Iran of Zoroaster, in the early dawn of the white race, one sees the first creator of the Aryan religion emerging from the forests of ancient Scythia.” (-Schure, The Great…