You Don't Have to Light My Fire Because It's Already Lit and Burns For You, Subtly.

In the first Inscription “One’s-self I Sing,” Whitman introduces Leaves of Grass with a lofty, confidant assessment of the grand project to follow. While often we dwell upon Whitman’s poetics of subjectivity, it’s important to remind ourselves, as we move through Leaves of Grass, of his greater Democratic goals. Hardly a solipsistic autobiographer, Whitman focuses intently on recording, translating, and celebrating the consciousness of the nation. In doing this, though, he doesn’t simply give glimpses/examples that he feels characterizes his America. While he employs these observational techniques quite often, he also attempts to craft a poetics of oneness with his readers, promising to tell them what they are, and why and how.

Thus, he writes “One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person / Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse” – he writes not of himself here, but “one’s-self”… and the later, larger “Song of Myself” sings a song of and for the masses: “Of life immense in Passion, pulse, and power / Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine / The Modern Man I sing.”

Leaves of Grass shows significant investment in (and reflection upon) this poetic goal to discover his readers, as they are and as he imagines them to be. He emphasizes most of all the deep connection between his readers (or his masses) and himself, as he the poet/prophet has been called and inspired to produce voluminous poetic documentation on their behalf. As he writes in “O You to Whom I Often and Silently Come”: “Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is / playing within me.”