Response "Song of Myself"

[Kristen]

This poem was definitely the most intriguing I have ever read.
The way Whitman words himself helps convey his true appreciation for
the exquisiteness of everyday life. He takes the simplest activities
and talks about them in a way that celebrates their simplicity and
extends and explores their complexity. He can take the smallest, most
insignificant thing and speak of it in a way and explain its existence
in so many different ways that it would make anyone question how they
thought of it before. For instance, throughout day to day life, we do
not consider a blade of grass; where it came from or how it lives.
Whitman takes that single blade and spirals into a whirlwind of
stories about it. "...Flag of my dispositions... handkerchief of the
Lord...a child... uniform hieroglyphic... uncut hair of graves..." I
believe he is saying that the blade is what one interprets it to be.
That being said, I do not think of Walt Whitman as arrogant at
all. The poem is, in fact, called "Song of Myself". However, it is
not actually solely about himself. I believe he means to speak of and
celebrate each individual and how they relate to themselves and to one
another. In section 15 he lists out each person he knows and sees and
their current function. He shows how each has his own way of life but
how they are all intertwined and essentially the same. He also
compares himself to every individual constantly throughout the poem.
"I resist anything better than my own diversity". He shows that no
one person is, in all actuality, better off than the next. Everyone
has something to look forward to whether young or old. "There was
never any 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. Urge and urge and
urge, Always the procreant urge of the world."