Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems
I just wrote an entire paper in under two hours using my cellphone light and an actual pen and paper. I swear to god I've gone insane. It is 8 bloody am, I should be sleeping but I'm not. I *had* to write that paper, I kept on trying to sleep and it wouldn't leave me so I wrote it. I will however wait until tomorrow to type it up so no crazy ass paper, you have not won entirely.
So instead of trying to get a couple hours of sleep so I can get up and do more homework that's actually due tonight instead I'm here. I'm here and I'm reading Song of Myself by Walt Whitman and in equal parts blubbering and celebrating. I have many many favorite poems and poets but I think Whitman is my favorite. There's something about his works, something that sings when I read them. But I think more importantly I understand them on such a level that it's intuitive almost. As much as I love Antler (the machines waited for me/waited for me to be born and grow young/for the totempoles of my personality to be carved/and the slow pyramid of days to rise around me/to be robbed and forgotten) and A.E. Housman and W.B. Yeats and Carl Sanburg and Ezra Pound, e.e. Cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and oh god Pablo Neruda and *so* many more I always come back to Whitman (you might surmise from that list that I love beat poets and you would be oh so right).
Or I could say Whitman always draws me back in. I read a line and I need to read the rest of the poem and soon enough I've forgotten what I originally was doing. I just... yeah, go read.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
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.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?
here
So instead of trying to get a couple hours of sleep so I can get up and do more homework that's actually due tonight instead I'm here. I'm here and I'm reading Song of Myself by Walt Whitman and in equal parts blubbering and celebrating. I have many many favorite poems and poets but I think Whitman is my favorite. There's something about his works, something that sings when I read them. But I think more importantly I understand them on such a level that it's intuitive almost. As much as I love Antler (the machines waited for me/waited for me to be born and grow young/for the totempoles of my personality to be carved/and the slow pyramid of days to rise around me/to be robbed and forgotten) and A.E. Housman and W.B. Yeats and Carl Sanburg and Ezra Pound, e.e. Cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and oh god Pablo Neruda and *so* many more I always come back to Whitman (you might surmise from that list that I love beat poets and you would be oh so right).
Or I could say Whitman always draws me back in. I read a line and I need to read the rest of the poem and soon enough I've forgotten what I originally was doing. I just... yeah, go read.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
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.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?
here