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Walt Whitman, "[I celebrate myself and sing myself]"

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Re-Reading Questions

Text on p. 881 of the full Ninth Edition

5 10

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, [1] And what I assume you shall assume, [2] For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. [3] I loafe and invite my soul, [4] I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. [5] My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, [6] Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, [7] Hoping to cease not till death. [8] Creeds and schools in abeyance, [9] Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, [10] Nature without check with original energy. [11]

Re-Reading Questions

Note: Some of these questions require extensive answers to explore them fully. Therefore, you may either use them as brief prompts for your own thinking about the poem after reading the study materials or explore them in a paper.

1. What do you now see in the poem that you missed on your first reading? What electronic glosses or questions would you now add to this hypertext?

2. What sort of person do you now imagine the poet-speaker to be? Here is the photograph which a reader would have seen with the poem; does it fit the image you have? Look at the other poems in your text by Whitman, especially "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" (1310 LIT). What do they add to the image and voice of the poet-speaker that you see and hear here?

3. Read the poem aloud, listening to the rhythmic cadences. Try shifting some words to see how the rhythm would change. This is one of the first examples of free verse, now so commonly used by modern poets. What sort of repeated patterns do you see here which replace rhyme?

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