As America was swept by a religious fervor during its "Second Great Awakening," its poets and philosophers alike dreamt of a world free from political oppression. Freedom of religious expression, equality and individuality tinted every line and page crafted by these visionaries of a new age. Just as Melville's "Moby Dick" weaves visions of brotherhood, Emily Dickinson yearns to see and be seen in her poem "Before I Got My Eye Put Out”, Walt Whitman in the year of 1855 wrote "Leaves of Grass" - a thin collection of twelve poems that was later to become “The Great Construction of the New Bible".

Walt Whitman's career had humble beginnings. Born in 1819 as the son of a slaveowner, Whitman left school at the age of eleven to support his family. Over the following years, he took on various occupations such as a "printer's devil," newspaperman, and realtor. However, it was in 1850 that he made the decision to reinvent himself as a poet. It took him five years to complete the initial manuscript of "Leaves of Grass," and a lifetime of refining and revising it, to rise from obscurity to become America's greatest poet.

A cynic may pose the question, "What is it that makes 'Leaves of Grass' so remarkable?" The individual being peevishly interrogated would then either grapple to find the right words, fearing misinterpretation, or spontaneously burst forth with sheer joy. It is the free-flowing form of words, breaking traditional ‘laws’ of poetry. The freedom of expression. The sublime highs of transcendence and the lows of earthly mundanity; soot, bloody corpses and milknosed maggots; cosmic unity, birth, and eternal resurrection. All these things are the same to him. Like God, he refrains from judgment; the speaker does not draw lines or makes distinctions. Men are equal to women, and white people are viewed no differently than slaves: “And all these things bear fruits …. and they are good” (p. 134).

In a similar vein to the European tradition of Mysticism, Walt Whitman delves poetically into questions of identity and spirituality. While mysticism, in its purest sense, focused on individual ecstasy through union with God, Whitman aimed for the “complete renovation of the world”. As the speaker oscillates between different modes of existence, being at once a woman and a slave, he portrays Americas complex character by constructing tableaux of its inhabitants. By employing a technique of poetical collage, the reader is intended to empathize with the prostitute as deeply as to identify with the fallen king of a once-glorious empire.

In his lifetime, Whitman did not himself align politically with abolitionism. Instead, he was an ardent proponent of the "Free Soil Movement", thus considered slavery as a threat to the economy and white labor. All the same, in "Leaves of Grass," Whitman expresses a profound belief in the humanity and dignity of African Americans, a sentiment that resonates even louder than any expression of hatred could ever do.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

It is mind-blowing to think that he self-published this the same year Longfellow's the Song of Hiawatha came out. The voice is SO modern. If I keep rolling with his lists and moments of merge in his longer poems such as 'Song of Myself" or "I Sing the Body Electric, I am moved if not transported, but they are so hard to analyze. Shorter poems are easier to analyze. It was amazing to read this first draft - many critics say it was his best. I can't say but I love how he just keeps writing it through his life. I do love the historicity of this version. After all these years, I still love part 6 of Song of Myself best though I first read it in high school. His expression of women's sexual freedom is nothing but revolutionary. His universalism that celebrates nationalism is something that makes me a little uncomfortable now.

I love prose, and I love epic poems. But this was just dumb. I kept looking for meaning, and for the life of me, I think the meaning was, "I got bored, so I jotted some random thoughts down. Love, Walt."

Some books or poems captivate you at a certain point in your life, then seem silly or trite or passé when you return to them later. Whitman resonates with greater truth and deeper insights every time I read him... my touchstone, my bible, my stranded on a deserted island book.

Una jodida obra maestra.

Well worth reading and re-reading