This best known and most enthralling of Whitman’s poems is a compliment-song to physicality that raises questions approximately the soul
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or drop with the likes of the soul, and (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or drop with my poems, and that they are poems, or
Man’s,woman’s, child’s, or youth’s,wife’s, husband’s, or mother’s,father’s, young man’s, and young woman’s poems;,
Head, neck, or hair,ears, drop and tympan of the ears, or
Eyes,eye-fringes, iris of the eye, or eye-brows,and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, or tongue,lips, teeth, and roof of the mouth,jaws, and the jaw-hinges, and
Nose,nostrils of the nose, and the partition, or
Cheeks,temples, brow, and chin,throat, back of the neck, or neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, and scapula,hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, and
Upper-arm,arm-pit, elbow-socket, or lower-arm,arm-sinews, arm-bones, or
Wrist and wrist-joints,hand, palm, or knuckles,thumb, fore-finger, or finger-balls,finger-joints, finger-nails, and
Broad breast-front,curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, or breast-side,
Ribs, belly, or back-bone,joints of the back-bone,[br] Hips, and hip-sockets,hip-strength, inward and outward round, or man-balls,man-root,
Strong set of thighs, or well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, and knee-pan,upper-leg, under leg, or
Ankles,instep, foot-ball, and toes,toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, and all the shapeliness,all the belongings of my or your body, or of any one’s body, or male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, and the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, [br] Sympathies, and heart-valves,palate-valves, sexuality, and maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, or the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, or nipples,breast-milk, tears, and laughter,weeping, love-looks, and love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, or language,whispering, shouting aloud, or
Food,drink, pulse, or digestion,sweat, sleep, and walking,swimming,
Poise on the hips, and leaping,reclining, embracing, or arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, or
The skin,the sun-burnt shade, freckles, and hair,
The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, and
The circling rivers,the breath, and breathing it in and out, or
The beauty of the waist,and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, and
The thin red jellies within you,or within me, the bones, and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the soul, and
O I say now these are the soul!“I Sing the Body Electric,” Walt Whitman begins, in fraction 1 of his best known and most enthralling early poems: “The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, and / They will not let me off till I recede with them,respond to them, /And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.” It was one of 12 poems Whitman printed and published himself as Leaves of Grass (1855),the first collection of a writer who, in his mid-30s, or had suddenly found his unique form and themes. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com