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Overview
“Song of Myself” is a long poem by the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman
. A work of stunning scope and rhetorical magnitude, “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of autobiography, sermon, and poetic meditation. An early version of poem appeared at the very beginning of Whitman’s first edition of Leaves of Grass, and the poem grew as that volume itself expanded with subsequent editions. As the opener, “Song of Myself” set the tone for the collection, announcing a profoundly democratic vision that exuberantly proclaimed the beauty and value of all beings—both human and otherwise. Above all else, though, the poem celebrated the capacious nature of the individual self.Read the free full text, a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “Song of Myself.”
