4).

Leaves of Grass was bound to be a quiet release, since the book was not printed or supported by a large publishing house with wide distribution, and did not even have a recognizable author’s name on the cover. A British name, in particular, would have helped, since midcentury America still looked toward England for artistic models and inspiration. Though political freedom had been established for decades, America was still a long way from gaining cultural independence. “Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?” asked Emerson in Nature. Whitman replaced Emerson’s interrogation with imperatives in his preface. “Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest,” he insists in the preface to the First Edition (p. 10). This twelve-page, double-columned preface that stood between the reader and Whitman’s twelve poems remains his definitive declaration of independence: These new American poets would represent and inspire the people, assuming the roles of priests and politicians; the new American poetry would be as strong and fluid as its rivers, as sweeping and grand as its landscapes, as various as its people.

As a living embodiment of the new poetry, the American reader was responsible for its grace, power, and truth. The urgent tone of the preface exposes Whitman’s desperation over the state of 1850s America—a country corrupted by its own leaders, torn apart by its own people, and facing an imminent civil war. His demands on readers were meant to shake awake a slumbering, passive nation and inspire a loving, proud, generous, accepting union of active thinkers and thoughtful doers:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (p. 13).

What is requested here is just as astonishing as how it is stated. The unidentified speaker of the preface possessed an extreme, provocative confidence that could be seen in the eyes and stance of the image on the frontispiece. His prophetic message for America was delivered in lines that evoked the passages and rhythms of holy books; the above section, for example, may be compared with Romans 12:1-21 in the New Testament. But while the writer had perhaps elevated himself to the status of a prophet, his run-on sentences, breathless lists, and general disregard for proper punctuation suggested that he was neither scholar nor trained or “proper” writer. Most outrageous of all was his direct confrontation of the reader—the use of “you” that really meant “you.” This personal advancement from writer to reader, this attempt to jump off the page into the audience’s immediate space and time, was a new and startling literary technique. And if the combination of audacious demands and prophetic, finger-pointing tone in the preface did not deter readers from moving on to the poems, they would find the same revolutionary style and content in the very first lines.

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you
(“[Song of Myself],” 1855, p. 29).

First-time readers of these lines still find the egotism tremendous and off-putting. The irregular length and randomness of the lines, along with the use of ellipses of various sizes, looks strange enough to the eye trained on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s neat verse or Alfred Tennyson’s stately measures. But the idea of engaging in a conversation with this relaxed figure, who sensually melds with the natural landscape around him (to the point where one is uncertain of the definitions of “loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine”), puts a more cautious reader on the defensive. In 1855 the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne was appalled by the poet’s position on the grass, claiming that he “abandons all personal dignity and reserve, and sprawls incontinently before us”; 150 years later, one might still wonder at a man who unabashedly declares that he will “become undisguised and naked”—and what’s more, celebrate every “atom” of himself.

“Song of Myself (as the poem was finally titled in 1881) may begin with ”I,“ but the poem’s last word is ”you.“ In between, the poet does inject a great deal of ego; his posture is clearly that of the poet-prophet with instructions and predictions for his listeners. The most important part of his message, however, concerns the reader’s intellectual and spiritual independence:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun .... there are
millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand .... nor
look through the eyes of the dead .... nor feed on the spectres
in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself
(“[Song of Myselfl,” 1855, p. 30).

In Leaves of Grass, Whitman recognizes the role of the poet as of the highest order. But he also notes that the role is open for everyone (hence, the lack of an author’s name on the front cover). This seeming irony is the first that Whitman’s readers must get past: the idea that the poet is inspired and must be heeded, but must be heeded regarding a lack of adherence. “He most honors my style,” explains the poet in “[Song of Myself],” “who learns under it to destroy the teacher” (p. 86). Throughout the poem, Whitman encourages the reader’s active participation and independent thinking with unpredictable breaks as well as provocative questions without “right” answers (many of them bear a resemblance to Buddhist koans).