From Poetry Daily:
DAVID CLEWELL'S POETRY MONTH PICK, 4/5/04

Song of Myself
- Walt Whitman
from Leaves of Grass, 1855


[1]

I celebrate 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.

[2]

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes. . . . the shelves are crowded
   with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume. . . . it has no taste of the
   distillation. . . . it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever. . . . I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echos, ripples, and buzzed whispers. . . . loveroot, silkthread,
   crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration. . . . the beating of my heart . . . .
   the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
   darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice. . . . words loosed to the
   eddies of the wind,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
   and hillsides,
The feeling of health. . . . the full-noon trill. . . . the song of me
   rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth
   much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
   all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun. . . . there are
   millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor
   look through the eyes of the dead. . . . nor feed on the spectres
   in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

---------------------------------

David Clewell comments:

"For my money, 'Song of Myself' is the first great American poem.
Other fine poems had been written in America, but here came
something absolutely born *of* its place, its time, annd its actual
flesh-and-blood humanity. Many 19th-century readers scratched their
heads and wondered exactly what species of 'poem' this was; that the
same notion still perplexes many folks today is a sure sign of
'Song's' vitality.

"Whitman revised the poem over the course of its published life,
but I'm fondest of the leaner, more sinewy (by Whitmanian standards,
anyway), original 1855 incarnation. These two opening 'chants' --
as Whitman liked to call them -- heralded a subject matter, a
burgeoning American idiom (oh, what W.C. Williams learns from Whitman,
although he never wanted to to sound like him!), an attitude, and a
relationship between speaker and reader that combined to make
something fresh, bold, intoxicating: Whitman's home-brew, if you
like. Through its fifty-two chants, is it also at times maddeningly
self-indulgent? You betcha. And yet it's more than worth every minute
of the ride.

"This American singer is the father of our poetry and -- along with
unlikely mother Dickinson -- opens the territory for so many
poet-descendents to come. 'Song of Myself' is an American original,
right up there with bourbon and Louis Armstrong."

DAVID CLEWELL is the author of six poetry collections, including
*Blessings in Disguise*, a winner in the National Poetry Series, *Now
We're Getting Somewhere*, 1994 winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in
Poetry and, most recently, *The Low End of Higher Things*. Clewell
teaches writing and literature at Webster University in St. Louis.

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