Walt Whitman's Nature

After now reading twenty poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I have begun to notice that many of his poems are about the same topics. In his poems, Whitman asks a lot of questions about life and the way it is. The topic that I mainly see used over and over in these poems is his encounter with nature. "The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night; Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;"(236) Whitman starts off with the use of animals, which already sets us to a mood in which we think about nature. The poem then continues with,"... The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, "(240) As shown here, nature and the wild are all something that Whitman talks about numerous times. From the gander to the dog, Whitman manages to use animals as a part of his poems. After copying these two stanzas to my blog, I began to think about what nature really meant back then, and what is means to us now. In the 1840's, the time period in which this book was published, the nature, farming, and animals were what controlled the life and the economy of the United States. The American people depended on agriculture to sustain their families, where as now, people tend to not consider it important anymore. This then brought me to how people live now compared to then. The majority of the people in the United States now live in the cities, or in suburbs. Living in those areas with such a high density of people ultimately blocks the people from having contact with nature.

Whitman later in the poem, talks about how he admires the people that live on farms. "am enamour'd of growing out-doors, Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods,"(246) This is important because Whitman stresses that humans should live alongside animals. He was living in a time where living in cities or living in farms was a decision that had to be made.

In the next stanza of the poem, Walt Whitman talks about how he loves the simple life, "What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me;"(251) Although he is describing himself in this line, it seems as if he is encouraging the lifestyle, saying that it is easier and cheaper than trying to live the urban lifestyle.

I also noticed that the cover of the book, which is in my previous post, has a picture of nature, including water, trees, hills, and a person. This is showing how from the cover of the book, the topic is already nature and humans together.

Overall, this poem really made me start thinking about how urbanization has been affecting humans recently. Before, life was easy and simple, and now it's getting harder and more complex. It made me start thinking about what people were getting themselves in to.