Singing of Myself

So I got the big Poetry Speaks: Expanded book for Christmas, which is thorough and fascinating and full of good stuff, even for people who think they've already had a pretty good introduction to the poets included in it. The thing that makes it the most awesome, obviously, is the ability to listen to the poets themselves read some of their poems, which is invaluable in a medium that's so sound-dependent.

But I've been enjoying the book even for the poets for which the recordings aren't really that valuable (the earliest ones, where all you can really hear is a muffled voice - like the adults on "Muppet Babies" used to sound like, come to think of it). For example, Walt Whitman. His recording is disputed because it's not 100% definite that's it's actually him speaking, so there's only so much stock you can put in that. But no matter how many times I read Whitman, there's always more I can get out of it. I mean, I taught a whole unit on him to my 11th graders for two years in a row, but I still get chills when I read parts of his poems.

I was especially taken in by Galway Kinnel's introduction to Whitman in Poetry Speaks - it's always refreshing to hear writers talking about their inspirations. Kinnell says:

"Meanings are deeply embedded in Whitman's words. It is as if each word had been pressed while still wet upon a part of reality, and then taken into a poem bearing its contours."

What a beautiful way to think about how Whitman weaves his word-spell over you. I love the accumulations of his lines, the way the length and breath of them piles up and piles up and piles up until they are spilling over the rims of cups, running onto the floor with no regard for the way they are ruining your space. His exuberance leaves you out of breath -

Translucent mould of me it shall be you,
Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you,
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life,
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you,
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you,
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you,
Sun so generous it shall be you ...

How can you not fall in love with someone who can write like that?