Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, November 16th, 2023.

Today I have three short poems for you by American poet Walt Whitman.

All three of these poems can be found in the opening section of the deathbed edition of Whitman's

leaves of grass. This is his great life's work. He spent many decades writing, rewriting,

revising and reorganizing this collection of poems, so that some have even

taken to treating the textual history of leaves of grass as a kind of biography or autobiography

of the poet himself. This opening section is entitled Inscriptions, and Whitman spent the better part of

three decades composing poems for this section, all meant to introduce or welcome the reader

into the larger collection, leaves of grass.

And they all make very clear what interest Whitman has in writing poetry and what he hopes it will do for his reader and what he hopes it will create between his reader and himself.

The first is called Beginning My Studies.

Beginning My Studies, the first step pleased me so much, the mere fact, consciousness,

these forms, the power of motion, the least insect or animal,

the senses, eyesight, love.

The first step I say awed me and pleased me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wished

to go any further.

But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic song.

Women here confessing that he tends to get caught up in his own poetry, not because he's enamored of the beauty of his verse,

but because the writing of the verse directs his attention to things that are so beautiful and so moving

that he must simply stop and sing.

But it's not good for man to be alone. And Whitman seems to sense that

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