Read Leaves of Grass because it is a treasure of a book. It will make you feel like you’re falling in love, with life, and with yourself. Endorsed by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the first page, he says he has “joy in reading it,” that is ”fortifying and encouraging.” Whitman writes sensual, passionately beautiful poetry about our experience as human beings. Reading and re-reading it will make your moments more rich and alive, filling your body, heart and soul with gratitude.
Whitman: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.
”The book includes the famous poem, “Song of Myself,” a tribute to the magic of our sensual, divine human body including the lines: “I dote on myself. There is a lot of me, and all so luscious. Each moment, and whatever happens, fills me with joy.” “Seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine I am, inside and out.”
He writes about the soul as a lover.
“I believe in you, my soul…I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
To my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.”
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”
Reflecting upon a few lines of Leaves of Grass will make your day better. This is poetry at it’s be