Book #42

On the Beach at Night Alone by Walt Whitman

A selection taken from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

I'm a self-confessed poetry dunce. I'll keep this short and sweet.

This is a good introduction to Whitman, and I enjoyed reading through his poems, albeit with the lack of knowledge and confusion akin to a child having poetry thrust upon them in school. There's a lot of emotion here, particularly love and devotion, and Whitman comes across as a pure individual describing relationships and nature with lyrical serenity.

I wish I were more intelligent to become at one with poetry; Whitman's collection particularly made me want to make this happen. Sitting, however, reading lines over and over again in a hapless attempt to understand, is frustrating; I adopted my usual coping mechanism with poetry and let the words wash over me, oblivious of their meaning. I'm definitely missing out.