UNIT

The Individual
and Society
Fitting In, or Standing Out?
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Discuss It This poem, read by its author at President

Barack Obama’s 2013 inaugural, praises America as a society of
individuals. How do the details of the poem present individual
Americans? What connections among individuals does
Blanco see?
Write your response before sharing your ideas.

Richard Blanco Reads

“One Today”
138
 MAKING MEANING

ESSAY | POETRY COLLECTION

The Writing of Walt Whitman

• from the Preface to the 1855 • I Hear America Singing
Edition of Leaves of Grass • On the Beach at Night Alone
• from Song of Myself • America

Concept Vocabulary
You will encounter the following words as you read part of an essay and a
number of poems by Walt Whitman. Before reading, note how familiar you
are with each word. Then, rank the words in order from most familiar (1) to
least familiar (6).

WORD YOUR RANKING

ampler

teeming

vast

breadth

prolific

multitudes

After completing the first read, come back to the concept vocabulary and
review your rankings. Mark changes to your original rankings as needed.

First Read NONFICTION and POETRY

Apply these strategies as you conduct your first read. You will have an
opportunity to complete the close-read notes after your first read.

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Tool Kit
First-Read Guide and
Model Annotation NOTICE new information or ANNOTATE by marking
ideas you learn about the unit vocabulary and key passages
topic as you first read this text. you want to revisit.
 STANDARDS
Reading Literature
By the end of grade 11, read and
comprehend literature, including
stories, dramas, and poems, in the
grades 11–CCR text complexity CONNECT ideas within RESPOND by completing
band proficiently, with scaffolding as the selection to other the Comprehension Check.
needed at the high end of the range. knowledge and the
Reading Informational Text selections you have read.
By the end of grade 11, read and
comprehend literary nonfiction in
the grades 11–CCR text complexity
band proficiently, with scaffolding as
needed at the high end of the range.

152 UNIT 2 • THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

 About the Author

Walt Whitman Background

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was The Writing of Walt Whitman

born on Long Island and raised in During the nineteenth century, American
Brooklyn, New York. His education writers found their own voices and began to
was not formal, but he read widely, produce literature that no longer looked to
including the works of Sir Walter Europe. Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Dickinson—
Scott, Shakespeare, Homer, and each contributed to a recognizably American
Dante. Trained to be a printer, style, but no one sounded as utterly American
Whitman spent his early years working at times as a as Whitman. His style incorporates the plain
printer and at other times as a journalist. When he was and the elegant, the high and the low, the
twenty-seven, he became the editor of the Brooklyn foreign and the native. It mixes grand opera,
Eagle, a respected newspaper, but the paper fired political oratory, journalistic punch, everyday
him in 1848 because of his opposition to slavery. conversation, and biblical cadences. Whitman’s
After accepting a job at a newspaper in New Orleans, sound is the American sound. From its first
Whitman traveled across the country for the first time, appearance as twelve unsigned and untitled
observing the diversity of America’s landscapes and poems, Leaves of Grass grew to include 383
people. poems in its final, “death-bed” edition (1892).
A New Vocation Whitman soon returned to New In the preface to the 1855 edition, Whitman
York City, however, and in 1850, he quit journalism wrote: “The proof of a poet is that his country
to devote his energy to writing poetry. Impressed by absorbs him as affectionately as he absorbed
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s prophetic description of a new it.” There is little doubt that, according to his
kind of American poet, Whitman had been jotting own definition, Whitman proved himself a poet.
down ideas and fragments of verse in a notebook for
years. His work broke every poetic tradition of rhyme
and meter as it celebrated America and the common
person. When the first edition of Leaves of Grass was
published in 1855, critics attacked Whitman’s subject
matter and abandonment of traditional poetic devices
and forms. Noted poet John Greenleaf Whittier hated
Whitman’s poems so much that he hurled his copy
of Leaves of Grass into the fireplace. Emerson, on
the other hand, responded with great enthusiasm,
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remarking that the collection was “the most

extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America
has yet contributed.”
His Life’s Work Though Whitman did publish other
works in the course of his career, his life’s work proved
to be Leaves of Grass, which he continually revised,
reshaped, and expanded until his death in 1892.
The poems in later editions became less confusing,
repetitious, and raucous, and more symbolic,
expressive, and universal. He viewed the volume as a
single long poem that expressed his evolving vision of
the world, and in its poems he captured the diversity
of the American people and conveyed the energy and
intensity of all forms of life. Today, Leaves of Grass is
regarded as one of the most important and influential
collections of poetry ever written.

The Writing of Walt Whitman 153

ANCHOR TEXT | ESSAY

from the
Preface to the 1855 Edition of

Leaves
of Grass Copyright © SAVVAS Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Walt Whitman
 1

A merica does not repel the past or what it has produced under
its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old
religions . . . accepts the lesson with calmness . . . is not so impatient
NOTES

as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and CLOSE READ
manners and literature while the life which served its requirements ANNOTATE: Mark details
has passed into the new life of the new forms . . . perceives that the in paragraph 1 that relate
corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the to death and other details
house . . . perceives that it waits a little while in the door . . . that it that relate to new life or
was fittest for its days . . . that its action has descended to the stalwart rebirth.
and well-shaped heir who approaches . . . and that he shall be fittest QUESTION: Why does
for his days. Whitman include these
2 The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have details? What is dying and
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are what is being born?
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the CONCLUDE: What
largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler impression of America do
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man these references create?
that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. ampler (AM pluhr) adj. more
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here abundant
is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and teeming (TEE mihng) adj. full
details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality vast (vast) adj. very great in
that forever indicates heroes. . . . Here are the roughs and beards and size
space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the
performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous
audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective
spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific breadth (brehdth) n. wide
and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches range; expansive extent
of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn prolific (pruh LIHF ihk) adj.
grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays fruitful; abundant
contain fish or men beget children upon women. . . . ❧
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from the Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass 155

 ANCHOR TEXT | POETRY

from
Song of

Walt Whitman
Myself

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 1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, NOTES

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loaf and invite my soul,

5 I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air.
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

10 Creeds and schools in abeyance,1

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

6 CLOSE READ
ANNOTATE: In Section 6,
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands,
mark the questions.
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he. QUESTION: Why does
Whitman choose to
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful present these ideas as
questions?
green stuff woven.
CONCLUDE: What is the
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, effect of these questions?
5 A scented gift and remembrancer2 designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

...
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What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

10 The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

1. abeyance (uh BAY uhns) n. temporary suspension.

2. remembrancer n. reminder.

from Song of Myself 157

 9
NOTES
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon.
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

5 I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,

I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the crossbeams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

5 The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill,

the chickadee, the prairie dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey hen and she with her half-spread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,

10 They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamor’d of growing outdoors,

Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and
mauls, and the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

15 What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,

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Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next
to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

5 This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.

158 UNIT 2 • THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

 51
NOTES
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. CLOSE READ
ANNOTATE: In Section 51,
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? mark details that suggest
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,3 the speaker is talking to a
5 (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) specific person or group of
people.
Do I contradict myself? QUESTION: Why does
Very well then I contradict myself, the speaker include these
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) references? Whom is the
speaker addressing?
I concentrate toward them that are nigh,4 I wait on the door-slab. CONCLUDE: What is the
effect of this approach?
10 Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with
multitudes (MUHL tuh toodz)
his supper? n. large number of people or
Who wishes to walk with me? things; masses

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of
my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp5 over the roofs of the world.

The last scud6 of day holds back for me,

5 It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse7my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
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I bequeath8 myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

10 If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

15 Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you. ❧

3. snuff . . . evening put out the last light of day, which moves sideways across the sky.
4. nigh adj. near.
5. yawp n. hoarse cry or shout.
6. scud n. low, dark, wind-driven clouds.
7. effuse (ih FYOOZ) v. pour out.
8. bequeath (bih KWEETH) v. hand down or pass on.
from Song of Myself 159