A review by alfyasmeen
Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

3.0

What I love about poetry is that there is a lot of room for interpretation. And in those beautiful 80 pages, Whitman did deliver what he promised before getting into the poem:
"You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."

A must-read for anyone who likes to analyze things. It made me want to be in a book club just to discuss it. I think if I loved poetry a bit more, I might have appreciated it immensely.

A few bits that I personally loved:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) "