Obsessed

Leaves of Grass by Whitman

I took my time with this short, stellar book.  I read the 1855 original edition with a intro by Malcolm Cowley.  When you're ready for this piece, you're ready!  Take your time with it, it's funner that way.

Here are a few of my favorite lines:

pg. 28
"Loafe with me on the grass .... loose the stop from your throast,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want .... not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice."


pg. 75 
"Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession..."


pg. 104 
"I swear I see not that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground .... the weeds of the sea
have .... the animals.

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it 
and the cohering is for it,
And all preparation is for it .. and identity is for it .. and life and death are for it."


pg. 119
"There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the
soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well."


pg. 141
"And that I grew six feet high .... and that I have become a man 
thirty-six years old in 1855 .... and that I am here anyhow - 
are all equally wonderful;
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each
other, is every bit as wonderful"


pg. 145
"Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,
Great is death .... Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds
all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is 
great as life."