1. Song of Myself poems 1, 2, 5, and 10 From Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

2. What IS “Song of Myself”?  It is part autobiography and part wish projection.  It recapitulates how a man of many roles becomes a poet, and how a poet becomes a god (sort of)  It was the first and longest entry in L of G in 1855. (“Walt Whitman” by RWB Lewis in Major Writers of America, Shorter Edition, 1966)

3. Page 63, Poem 1  Speaker = Whitman himself  He’s 37, in perfect health, was born here as were his parents and grandparents.  “Creeds and schools in abeyance” = He doesn’t want outside authority or restraints. He seeks freedom of mind and body, and complete individuality; he doesn’t let anyone tell him what to think or how to act.

4. Pages 63-65, Poem 2  First strophe (group of lines) emphasizes smell  “Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes…”

5. 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.

6. Pages 63-65, Poem 2  Alternating current of imagery Nature HumansNature Humans 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 dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, 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 hill-sides,

7.  “Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems”?  Tone = challenging, condescending, scornful POETR Y Pages 63-65, Poem 2

8. Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, … You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. MY IDEAS

9. Poem 5, page 67  The speaker addresses his soul  The soul becomes a human lover  No genders are mentioned; the reader can picture any combination  The last strophe is climactic and triumphant and then dies down to a calm connection with nature Soul + Body + Nature = Typical Whitman  Imagery = voice, clothing, feet, beard, chest, hips and the “bare-stripped heart” which is not literal but figurative, a metaphor for opening up to another with no pretense & no defense.

10. Originally a transparent JUNE morning in 1855… “I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning…” I believe in you my soul, … Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning… 'Song of Myself' [1855] bby James E. Millerhttp://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_52.html

11. Poem 10, pp. 71-72  Discrete images of American Life (almost certainly not Whitman’s life)  Little Vignettes (vignette = a brief evocative description, account, or episode; a small, graceful literary sketch.) (Google & Dictionary.com)

12. Poem 10, pp. 71-72 First Vignette Speaker hunting in the woods with a dog Builds a fire and cooks his fresh-killed game Example of “wish projection”? Albert Bierstadt, Yosemite Valley, ca. 1873

13. Poem 10, pp. 71-72 Clipper ship Southern Cross leaving Boston Harbor, 1851, by Fitz Hugh Lane Second Vignette: Speaker is on a Yankee clipper ship Speaker in on shore, eating with “boatmen and clam diggers” Showing Whitman’s preference for working-class men

14. Poem 10, pp. 71-72  Third Vignette: the marriage of a Native American woman to a Euro-American trapper.  Actually based on a painting of the time by Alfred Jacob Miller: The Trapper's Bride The Walt Whitman Archive. “To Walt Whitman, America” by Kenneth M. Price http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/anc.00151.ht ml

15. Poem 10, pp. 71-72 Last Vignette: Helping a Runaway Slave  Sensory detail and precise wording: The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, …gave him some coarse clean clothes, And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles… I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

16. In conclusion… “Song of Myself” is by turns  Literal and plain-spoken  Symbolic and obscure  Autobiographic  A wish projection told through an invented persona  Realistic  Sensual  Spiritual The speaker is not always Whitman; the reader has to know something of his life to tell if it is or may be.