What This Collection Is
Walt Whitman signs his name to a project that attempts to contain the entire American experience within a single set of verses. The poems discard traditional rhyme to catalog the physical sensations of the body, the noise of growing cities, and the specific geography of a continent stretching from the Adirondacks to the Texas plains. The speaker positions himself as a comrade to all, claiming that no part of the human form or the democratic state is unworthy of being sung. From the death-chant of a California redwood to the quiet breathing of sleepers in their beds, the work asserts that the individual soul and the collective nation are inseparable.
Figures & speakers
- Walt Whitman
The self-identified chanter of pains, joys, and the modern man.
- The Phantom
A terrible beauty representing the genius of ancient poets.
- America
A continent of democracy characterized by its diversity and native persons.
- Fancy
The speaker's dear mate and love addressed during his final departure.
What it's really about
- Democratic En-Masse
- The celebration of the individual within a collective society.
- Athletic Love
- The importance of manly attachment and the need for comrades.
- Physiology
- The belief that the complete physical form is worthy of song.
Why it's memorable
- A child wandering barefoot through briers at midnight to hear a mockingbird's yearning song.
- Loggers' axes sounding musically as a two-hundred-foot-tall redwood tree chants its own death-hymn.
Where it lands
The speaker bids farewell to his creative imagination, wondering if death is simply a turning knob leading to truer songs.
For your book club
- The tension between the 'simple separate person' and the 'word Democratic' in American identity.
- The comparison of human life to 'tomb-leaves' growing up from the soil of the dead.