Dear Whitman (Week 1)

Mr Whitman, 
I am a senior in highschool and I read your poem Song of Myself, and it feels like you're telling me my ordinary life is actually worth making attention to. When you say "contain multitudes", it makes me think about all the different versions of myself I'm trying to figure out, as I am growing and entering adulthood. I like how you write about people in streets and fields, because it makes school and home feel like they matter too. Sometimes your confidence sounds huge, and I wonder how you learned to be so proud of just being yourself. I hope as I grow into the person I am becoming that I can take some of the traits you have, and carry it with me. 

Comments

  1. MattFebruary 2, 2026 at 4:35 PM

    Emma this is the most generous & accurate reading of Whitman possible because you're taking him at his word that ordinary life, YOUR ordinary life, school & home & the versions of yourself you're trying on as you figure out who you're becoming, is worth the kind of attention usually reserved for epic heroes or tragic figures & that's the whole democratic promise of his work, that every self contains multitudes & every moment matters not because it's special but because it's REAL, it's happening, you're living it & here's the thing about his confidence that I want you to sit with: a lot of that swagger is Whitman performing confidence as a way of talking himself into it, like he's not writing from a place of already-arrived self-assurance he's writing his way TOWARD it, using the poem as the space where he gets to try on that bigness & see how it feels, which means you're already doing what he did every time you write or think or try on a new version of yourself to see if it fits, the confidence comes FROM the trying not before it, so yeah take that with you as you grow into whoever you're becoming but know that "being proud of just being yourself" isn't a destination you arrive at once & stay forever it's a practice you return to over & over especially when you forget. love this!!!

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