Photographer Unknown, I Exist As I Am

“I exist as I am, that is enough, 

If no other in the world be aware I sit content, 

And if each and all be aware I sit content. 

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, 

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, 

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,

And I know the amplitude of time.

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 20, Leaves of Grass

“Song of Myself”, one of the most famous of Walt Whitman’s works and a poem that represents the core of his poetic vision, was one of the original twelve pieces in the 1855 first edition of “Leaves of Grass”, published at Whitman’s own expense. Originally published without sections, the final edition consists of thirteen hundred lines arranged in fifty-two separate but connected works. 

Like most of the other poems in “Leaves of Grass”, this poem  was revised extensively, reaching its final form in 1881. “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of biography and poetic meditation, with Whitman using symbols and sly commentary to get at important issues. Composed in a series of vignettes with  small, precisely drawn scenes, the poem is written in Whitman’s signature free verse style.

This poem did not take on the title “Song of Myself” until the 1881 edition. Previous to that it had been titled “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” and, in the 1860, 1867, and 1871 editions, simply “Walt Whitman.” The poem’s shifting title is suggestive of the theme Whitman examined in this piece. As Walt Whitman, the specific individual, melts away into the abstract “Myself”, the poem explores the possibilities for communion between individuals.

Following its 1855 publication, “Song of Myself” was immediately singled out by critics and readers for particular attention, and the work remains among the most acclaimed and influential in American poetry. Public acceptance, however, was slow in coming. Social conservatives denounced the poem as disregarding norms of morality due to its obvious depictions of human sexuality.

Note: An interesting read from The Walt Whitman Archive is James E Miller’s “Sex and Sexuality” which deals with the themes of sex and sexuality in Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. The commentary can be found at: https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_49.html