Part Of A Whole

One may think that describing simple things is easy because the thing itself is very simple. Think about water, you know what it is but try explaining it to somebody and I can assure you won’t have anything else to say except it’s just water. Walt Whiteman states the same “A child said, what is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands; how could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.”(Poem 6). There is no way you can explain a simple thing like this. You can describe it but not explain it.

Now think about poetry, you never understand a poem the first time you read it because of the complex words and the analysis you have to do to understand it. Walt Whitman is different. Reading Leaves of Grass I noticed how his poems have a unique style, they do what the author is saying. By using simple words to talk about simple things to make the reader literally understand what he is saying. I got the impression that the poems are not only saying one thing, but that each reader can get a personal meaning from his words and he usually leaves you thinking. “All goes onward and outward-nothing collapses; and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.” Why would a poem that talks about grass end like this? It is also written as if the narrator had experienced death. It could be death or the end in a different way, in this case the end of the poem.

The title fascinated me “Leaves of Grass”. This again proves Whitman’s unique style. Trees have leaves, grass has blades. In class, we read an introduction to this book where Whitman talks about America and how it has evolved, they the Americans are the greatest poets and America has its separate pieces but it is still as a whole. Each state is different but together that form they great America. The different people not necessarily have to be Americans. That explains the title, if you think about America would be grass and the people that make it up would be the leaves meaning that they are not Americans. The book itself relates with the title, it has the different poems that together make up the whole book. Each one a piece and yet they are a whole.