An episode from 4/19/22: From the opening line of the Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman announced that his great theme was unity: “I celebrate myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” As the last two episodes show, his best poems on both love and death rise up out of this central belief in humanity’s unity with nature and the animal world, and our unity as a human species, which crosses all barriers of race, religion, and belief. And finally, in perhaps his best poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” that unity extends from the past, the present, and into the future.Tonight, then, I read the best of Whitman’s poems in this vein, which (for lack of a better word) I have simply called “mystical.” All of the poems can be found in the two recent books I edited, ⁠The Selected Short Poems of Walt Whitman⁠, and ⁠The Selected Long Poems of Walt Whitman⁠. Short Poems: Selections from “Song of Myself” Assurances Earth, My Likeness Full of Life Now To a Common Prostitute Mother and Babe O Me! O Life! Sparkles from the Wheel To Thee Old Cause! A Clear Midnight From Montauk Point America L. of G.’s Purport Give Me the Splendid Silent SunLong Poems: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1:08:00) Song of the Open Road (1:26:00) A Song of the Rolling Earth (1:48:53)Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

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