“I celebrate myself, and sing myself”
Today’s my birthday (and Bono’s). Every year to celebrate, I read Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” or at least as much of it as I have time for.
His signature expansive lines and inclusive outlook are perfect reminders for the day. And I have noticed already in the nearly 15 years I’ve done this, that different sections have come to mean different things to me. Experience has evolved my understanding of some passages, and what’s important to me now has changed since I was 20 or 25 o even 30. (I’m 35 today, by the way.)
So now,I’m off to “sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
A few sections of the poem are here.
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe
…. and am not contained between my hat and boots