Walt Whitman, in his preface to Leaves of Grass:
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 towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with th emothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine 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.
I love this so much
My kids memorized this when they were very small just because we read it every day in our homeschool (any poem they said “read it again Mom” went in the read-every-day folder and was quickly memorized. It was an amazing thing when a cute 6 year old recited (she couldn’t even read)it at my Dad’s funeral. My Dad was pretty salty, pretty black and white, lived by his own rules which included lots of tolerance and compassion.
This gets me right in the throat. When I look at pictures of Walt Whitman, I understand what he meant by one’s very flesh being a great poem.
This is beautiful. It is especially important during ones lifetime to “dismiss whatever insultsâ our own being. It’s never good to dwell on the insensitivity of others toward what we do or say, or how we act when we are only being ourselves. It is not within anyoneâs power to offend me, and I am a very happy person as a result.
– This Poem Is So TRUE , Me && My classmates have to do a project about poetry and we have too use , walt whitman’s poem as an idea of how , you can have a good life … This poem is powerful in many differnt Ways …. <3