Spotted: Leaves of Whitman

If you haven't found your way to poetry yet, you will after this.

With the help of one witty american poet and some Movies and Series, a lifelong relationship will shortly begin:

On the 31st of May in 1819 on Long Island in New York, a boy named Walt Whitman was born.

Back then he wouldn't know of him being a pioneer of modern american Poetry.

In 1955 he published his work Leaves of Grass, which was going to be his most famous piece.

In his poems he engaged with the Equality of genders, Democracy and the beauty of Nature.

Now I know who that american poet was, but what about the Movies and Series you mentioned?

Ever heard of O Captain! My Captain! before?

At least since this payed tribute to Robin Williams after his death, you may have seen it all over the Internet.

This famous quote is from a movie called Dead Poets Society in which Williams plays the beloved English teacher Keating, who´s respectfully addressed with O Captain! My Captain! by his students.

Originally though, it´s the head line of one of Whitmans poems, What a Surprise!

What about The Notebook?

If you´ve seen it you may already know that the protagonist Noah struggled with stuttering in his early years and solved it by reading poems every evening with his Dad.

See where I´m going? Those poems are written by Walt Whitman.

In John Greens Papertowns, his poems play a crucial role since Margo´s obsessed with them.

And Walter White from Breaking Bad has a pretty uncanny resemblance to his name, hasn't he?

You probably have seen at least one of those Movies or Series before, but you most likely never knew you already heard one of Whitmans poems when you started reading this.

Your Welcome.

Now back to business.

In this post I want to bring you closer to his work and philosophy.

I have never read anything more beautiful and true than Leaves of Grass and to give you the chance to decide for yourself, I collected my favourite poems for you to dive into.

Most of them are pretty long, but it´s definitely worth to read the whole thing.

Take your time to think about them and truly understand them, because they will blow your mind. I promise.

Enjoy.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Have you reckon´d a thousand acres much?

Have you reckon´d the earth much?

Have you practise´d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get to 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,

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.

There was never more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now;

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

To elaborate is no avail...

Learn´d and unlearn´d feel that it is so.

Clear and sweet is my soul...

and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lacks one lacks both...

and the unseen is proved by the seen,

Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in it´s turn.

Trippers and askers surround me,

People I meet...the effect upon me of my early life...

of the ward and city I live in...of the nation,

The latest news...discoveries, inventions,

societies...authors old and new,

My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,

The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,

The sickness of one of my folks-or of myself...

or ill-doing...loss or lack of money...or depressions or exaltations,

They come to me days and nights and go from me again,

But they are not the Me myself.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and

knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;

And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,

And that all men ever born are also my brothers...and

the woman my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love;

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heaped stones, and

elder and mullen and pokeweed.

Song of Myself

⌊6⌉

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child...I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my deposition,

out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord.

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,

Bearing the owner´s name someway in the corners,

that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child...

the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among whites,

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same,

I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,

It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;

It may be you are from old people and from women, and

from offspring taken soon out of their mother´s laps,

And here you are the mother´s laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,

Darker than the colourless beards of old men,

Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,

And the hints of old men and mothers, and the offspring

taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward...and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and

luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die,

and I know it.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal

and fathomless as myself;

They do not knowhow immortal, but I know.

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest

is Me,

Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,

Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will

take me,

Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,

Scattering it freely forever.

Best of Thoughts,

Lena