The Daily Feather — Leaves of Grass
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes).”
The above stanza is arguably the most famous excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” the first of 12 poems published in Leaves of Grass. Whitman, possibly America’s most heralded poet, trailblazed with a free-flowing style that snubbed traditional rhyme scheme or meter. Across its 52 sections, “Song of Myself” embraces a romantic view of nature and stresses our interconnectedness as humans, likely inspired by the Transcendentalist movement that took hold in New England in the mid-1800s. The “self” referred to in the poem is not just Whitman, but rather a universal one that encompasses all of civilization and the natural world. Following its original publication in 1855, fellow writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a congratulatory letter to Whitman in which he described the poem as “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”
Friday was as chaotic a news day as we’ve had in months, if not years: a jobs report with record downward two-month revisions, the subsequent firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner for how perverted said jobs report was, and the resignation of Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler. All three crossed the wires before markets closed down on the week.