Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass, offers a celebration of life, death, and everything in between. Whitman writes almost literally about everything under the sun, although his primary subjects are humanity and nature. His poems are affirmations of the goodness and abundance of life on every level---physical, emotional, spiritual, sexual.

The style Whitman uses is almost Biblical in its rhythms and stateliness, but the poet does not mean to put himself above the reader in any way. Instead, he argues that all human beings are brothers and sisters together in the adventure of life, none superior to any other. His poems are idealistic and religious in the sense that he approves and praises everything in life and in the world, but especially the human being, spiritual and physical: "I am the poet of the body,/ And I am the poet of the soul" (Whitman 44).

On one level, the pieces in this volume are thoroughly American, and on another level, they are universal in their embrace of all things and creatures in the world. In the opening prose piece, Whitman focuses on the role of America in the world, especially in the spiritual or inspirational sense. He writes of the America which opens its arms to all peoples and all races in the world. In fact, he widens the definition of America to include all souls who have a poetic nature:

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . accepts th

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himself to the reader in order to do so. He asks of himself the same vulnerability he asks of the reader: Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid . . . I have been well brought forward by you. . . I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you . . . but I know I came well and shall go well (Whitman 115). Here again we see the poet's basic philosophy: we are all in this together, and it is, overall, a lovely and beautiful adventure. If we are not together now, we will be together sooner or later: "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,/ Missing me one place search another,/ I stop some where waiting for you" (Whitman 86). Whitman is seen as a sensuous poet, a poet of the sexual, and there is certainly much of a sexual nature in these poems. Critics note what seem to be homosexual images in the poems as well, but in the poems at least, Whitman is all-embracing, seeing himself as a lover of women, men, and all things and beings in the world, whether sexual or otherwise. Again, there is no doubt that Whitman includes sexuality in his celebration of life: "The bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,/ They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and r

Category: Literature - W