I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

Jami bought me a new Panama hat (though these things are not - as I've been informed - often crafted in Panama now a days). My old hat, which I had received from a friend back in 1989 had become very brittle from weather and neglect and over use, covered with grime and a patina of paint and oil, pocked with holes and threatening to become a visor. So I needed a new hat for the summer, and Jami found it when she was at the Methodist general conference on business for Duke Divinity. It is a magnificent specimen, broader of brim and more snug in its fit, rounder and not as fedora-like in style. It goes well with my white linen shirt. Inspired I began reading Whitman's leaves of grass - posing myself as near as I could remember in the famous title page photo that graced the first edition.
I can't believe that I'm 48 and only since January, when I saw a PBS American Masters on Whitman, have I immersed myself in his work. He's extremely interesting. "I celebrate myself and sing myself" - penned in 1855 and revised until 1881 before his death. Amazing that such a thing would be written in America in the 19th century, much less before the civil war.
Sure this poem has things often referred to: the "barbaric yawp" for instance - but it is much more. I especially find touching this last section, 52.

"The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless.
And filtre and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Whenever I come to that last line, my eyes get watery. Certainly I'm prone to sentimentality. But I believe it is more: Whitman has crafted an odyssey, a journey of the poet among the people, and after declaring that "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you" in the third line, he is stating that his presence, or the presence of his muse, his daemon, or his prophetic sensibility, exists forever and remains - that death is not an end - we have only to look for where that presence waits for us. The tone of the end is comparable to the end of Prufrock - which I would not be surprised to learn that Eliot had lifted the form from Whitman: "I have seen them [the mermaids who had be singing] riding seaward on the waves/ combing the white hair of the waves blown back/ when the wind blows the water white and black//We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/ by seagirls wreathed in seaweed red and brown/ till human voices wake us and we drown." The elegiac voice, but without Whitman's hope, Whitman's expectation and willingness to remain and wait.

But this poem has more. From the first line we are encouraged to celebrate ourselves - as does the poet, who enjoins us the be aware of his journeying among us. I am amazed that a man, living in America in the 1850s could be so aware of his body, his being and the being of others and the earth, and declare it on paper. It's scarcely possible today to imagine such transparency. How unhealthy is our puritanism: not just in discussing matters sexual (and the puritans were somewhat frank on that - unlike their descendants) but in being embodied, in not being governed by an over weening sense of shame. I feel that this call to celebrate and sing is missed today. Certainly there are people who promote themselves - but Whitman's distinction is that he is not of the promoters, the advertisers, but simply singing himself - not a cause, not an ideology. Winnicott gets at this with his distinction of the authentic and the false self, obsessed with what others may be thinking of it. Whitman is proclaiming that he is about living authentically.

I celebrate myself and sing myself.
Wearing a straw hat and white linen shirt as I enter my 49th year on life's arc.
Earlier I'd written 48th, but I've completed 48 years. When this year is over I'll be 49.