Reading Song of Myself I tried to make notes for each section to try and decipher some kind of pattern in the poem’s progression. Each section at first seemed to be more or less self-contained units of commentary, praise, observation, what have you on a broad subject, flowing into the next section organically. The first ten sections or so seemed to follow this pattern, where it seemed like Whitman was laying out the goal of the rest of the poem starting on a cosmic level and gradually narrowing to musings on life and death on a spiritual and material level–historically, culturally, politically, and individually. However, after that the poem seemed to take its own course of “perpetual transfer” (section 49). It was a little confusing to grasp because of the vast amounts of description on an equally vast array of subjects. By the end Whitman seems to acknowledge the poem’s nature in light of his understanding of poetry as containing multitudes because it acknowledges everything “in its place” (Section 16). He expands on this notion by directly addressing the poem’s subtle goal, noting “If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,/ The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words” (47).
Whitman seeks to be the “Poet of the Body and the poet of the Soul” whose “Speech is the twin of [his] vision…unequal to measure itself.” He draws on the inherent … of such binary divisions as body and soul, thoughts and words, but at the same time he tries to refract the meaning of division and distinction into final unity. Naturally this would seem to lead to difficulty and confusion, as a reader tries to follow a pattern of distinction and category within the poem but is continually denied it by virtue of the poem’s intent as well as its unstructured form. Perhaps this difficulty is what Whitman was addressing at the poem’s close “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I also think Whitman includes these contradictions on a purposeful basis. While his lens seems broad, it often narrows to speak of each individual. He likes to stand as the poet of the people and as an individual and an advocate for such. As he invites others to his table “equally set,” he highlights the expansive nature of his acceptance and of the America he represents. I think the manner in which Whitman characterizes himself as someone bound by contradictions better enables him to represent America in its diverseness. His ideologies become evident in the openness of his writing itself; both his writing style and his all-inconclusive nature paint him as a revolutionary figure and contribute to the notion that he serves as the quintessential American poet.
I often have a similar experience, and I find critical readings of SOS that try to divide it neatly into certain moves or sections–as though it emerged from some governing generic structure–to be rather limiting. Whitman is a poet not of tangents. He’ll build half a house, and then abandon it for a walk in the woods, and then abandon that for some cosmic explorations among the journey-work o stars. He makes his way back home, eventually, but a poet of such diverse themes–life and death, past and future, soul and body, solitary self and other, and so on–can’t be neatly contained even in a the kind of sprawling poem that SOS is!