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Sorry to my American friends but this was just my first time to read poems by your Walt Whitman (1819-1892). I know that his Leaves of Grass (tbr) is a required reading in high schools in the US. I have a copy of the book but I thought I should sample a thinner book by him first.This thin (59 pages) and small (3-1/2" x 4-1/2") poetry book contains 16 poems of Whitman. The title poem I Sing the Body Electric is the best and immediately engaging (meaning, it was so beautiful, I told myself that I...
I Sing the Body Electric is a wonderful celebration of human body. Body and soul, for Whitman, are not two different entities. In the beginning, he asks "if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?". The question seems like a rhetoric because at the end, he adds,"O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,O I say now these are the soul!"Throughout the poem, he gives equal importance to both body and soul, and comes to a well-crafted conclusion of body and so...
did i understand? no. did i love it? yes.
Whitman captures all of body and soul in this work..."All is a procession,The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion" - Walt Whitman
I was reading this at 3 in the morning, searching for something that can take my mind off things and hoping this poem might do the least. But here I am, with a smile on my face, floating through the verses, feeling so light and content, carrying a small portion of hope that this poem has passed on to me. There are a lot of recurrent themes in this work, like peace, childhood, love, nostalgia, etc.. beautifully written in an impeccable verse. It made me yearn for a place I never been to, and want...
Whitman's ability to make observations and transform them into flowery words is awe-inspiring. Now I can see why Lana Del Rey copied this book title for one of the songs on her first album. He truly was a literary genius.
This best known and most enthralling of Whitman’s poems is a praise-song to physicality that raises questions about the soul
I'm just not a poetry person. I had to read this for a Modernism course. The poem the book is named for is just a celebration of the human body. It's full of a lot of obvious platitudes about how we're all equal and nobody should look down on anyone else. Idk, maybe that was groundbreaking back in the day. I can't get anything out of this as a modern reader. It was just a lot of obvious, feel-good stuff.
“I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.”
excrutiating to get through
Beautifully written, as always Walt, but what are you writing about?
Very Gay Very Good
This starts as a treatise on human vigour, beauty and life itself. It gets so sweet at times it’s almost like an erotic read…(To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,All things please the soul, but these please the soul well...
I'm not sure what to say. Good poem, I guess. Instead of reading my (nonexistent) review, watch this Fame clip instead. It embodies the emotion and meaning of the poem much better than I ever could.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG-wl2qqD7Y
Simply beautiful, loving.
¡Afirmo que son del alma!
600 something pages of poetry and I always end up reading the same parts of Leaves of Grass, one day I'll finish all of it..