Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

From “I Sing the Body Electric” 1855

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,

nor the likes of the parts of you,

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul,

(and that they are the soul,)

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that

they are my poems.

Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s,

young man’s, young woman’s poems.

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears.

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping

of the lids,

Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,

Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the

ample side-round of the chest,

Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints,

finger-nails,

Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,

Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,

Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls,

man-root,

Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,

Leg-fibers, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,

Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of

any one’s body, male or female,

The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,

Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes

from woman,

The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks,

love-perturbations and risings,

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked

meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward

the knees,

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the

bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

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!

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. FIRST RESPONSE. What informs this speaker’s attitude toward the human body?
2. Read the poem aloud. Is it simply a tedious enumeration of body parts, or do the lines achieve some kind of rhythmic cadence?

Perspective

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

On Rhyme and Meter 1855

The poetic quality is not marshaled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough … the fact will prevail through the universe … but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost.

From the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

1. According to Whitman, what determines the shape of a poem?
2. Why does Whitman prefer open forms over fixed forms such as the sonnet?
3. Is Whitman’s poetry devoid of any structure or shape? Choose one of his poems (listed in the index) to illustrate your answer.

A sample student response

The text on the top left reads as follows.

Avery Bloom

Professor Rios

English 212

7 October 2018

The Power of Walt Whitman’s Open Form Poem open quotes Sing the Body Electric close quotes.

Paragraph 1. Walt Whitman’s open quotes Sing the Body Electric close quotes is an ode to the human body. The poem is open form, without rhymes or consistent meter, and instead relies almost entirely on the use of language and the structure of lists to affect the reader. The result is a thorough inventory of parts of the body that illustrates the beauty of the human form and its intimate connection to the soul.

Paragraph 2. At times, Whitman lists the parts of the body with almost complete objectivity, making it difficult to understand the poem’s purpose. The poem initially appears to do little more than recite the names of body parts: open quotes Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears close quotes (line 5); open quotes Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges close quotes (7). There are no end rhymes, but the exhaustive and detailed list of body parts (hyphen) from the brain to the open quotes thin red jellies (ellipsis), the bones and the marrow in the bones close quotes (33) (hyphen) offers language that has a certain rhythm. The language and rhythm of the list create a visual image full of energy and momentum that builds, emphasizing the body’s functions and movements. As Michael Meyer and D Quentin Miller write, open form poems open quotes rely on an intense use of language to establish rhythms and relations between meaning and form. [They] use the arrangement of words and phrases (ellipsis) to create unique forms close quotes (page 708). No doubt Whitman chose the open form for this work (hyphen) relying on his open quotes intense use of language close quotes and the rhythm of the list (hyphen) because it allowed a basic structure that held together but did not restrain, and a full freedom and range of motion to create a poem that is alive with movement and electricity (ellipsis).

The entries are as follows.

Meyer, Michael, and D Quentin Miller, editors. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, Twelfth edition Bedford slash Saint Martin’s, 2019.

Whitman, Walt. Open quotes From I Sing the Body Electric close quotes. Meyer and Miller, p p. 705 to 706.

Open form poetry is sometimes regarded as formless because it is unlike the strict fixed forms of a sonnet, villanelle, or sestina (which are defined in Chapter 24). But even though open form poems may not employ traditional meters and rhymes, they still rely on an intense use of language to establish rhythms and relations between meaning and form. Open form poems use the arrangement of words and phrases on the printed page, pauses, line lengths, and other means to create unique forms that express their particular meaning and tone.

The excerpt from Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” demonstrates how rhythmic cadences can be aligned with meaning, but there is one kind of open form poetry that doesn’t even look like poetry on a page. A prose poem is printed as prose and represents, perhaps, the most clear opposite of fixed forms. Here are two brief examples.