admin March 19th, 2008

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“Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body… . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured … others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches … and shall master all attachment.”

This is a popular passage from Walt Whitman’s preface to Leaves of Grass; this amazing book was truly Whitman’s life work (he kept revising and upgrading it during his lifetime - having started with a dozen poems, the final edition amassed almost 400), and I think it’s notorious because it provides a fresh and contemporary glance towards America and the world of men, even though it was written nearly 200 years ago.

Whitman set of to write the original Leaves of Grass in a heartfelt response of sorts and essay titled “The Poet” where Emerson claimed America needed its own poem, one who would able to effectively write about its vices and virtues.

“Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung.”

According to Whitman himself, this passage caused his simmering spirits to boil, and thus he embarked the lifelong journey of mapping the United States of America in poetry. Not only was Whitman successful in pursuing such a daunting task, but he actually managed to surpass himself as well as his own historic period, thus creating this wonderful timeless and universal poetry. Whitman was a person who transcended the act of writing poetry and actually became living poetry; anyone who’s interested to learn about such alchemy should definitely delve into Leaves of Grass.

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