VERY Walt-Whitmanish! In just these few words, Walt Whitman enters the core of human inspiration -- to stay alive, to keep doing things, to keep up the spirit of racial continuity in a universalised mould. Poetry is the core of that inspiration. However, Whitman does not talk of poetry per se -- in the form of words and meter and stanzas. He suggests poetry as a human expression with the help of words as well as something that goes beyond words. What Whitman wishes to talk of is the sublimation of human spirit that goes well beyond the call of mere subsistence. Whitman does acknowledge that medicine, law, business, engineering are essential for material dimension of life, all right ... But poetry, beauty, romance, love ... these are what we stay alive for. In just these few words, Whitman offers to explain the core value and purpose of why we live. Going by this definition on offer by a transcendentalist like Walt Whitman, we realise the need of human soul -- poetry, beauty, romance, love ... ! Let us try another interpretation: What are poetry, beauty, romance, love?

 

They are expression of inner song of human existence -- poetry in words, beauty in visual satiation of human urge for excellence, romance in human calling for intimacy of varying kinds. In other words, the human soul is all the time looking to express itself -- by way of sharing of expressions, of love, of togetherness ...! When these are available -- the opportunities to express in these varied kinds -- then good souls find the purpose or inspiration for living, to stay alive for. Since time immemorial, the humans have lived not just for eating or drinking or luxury ...! Countless millions of humans, since when Time began, have made tremendous sacrifices of physical or material comforts for spiritual upliftment. They have lived lives of penury if they had what they wanted -- to read and write poetry, enjoy beauty, have feeling of romance ...! At this point, we need a twist of the route we have taken to understand Walt Whitman’s words in “Leave of Grass”.

 

At this point, we need to understand or interpret correctly the word ‘romance which Whitman uses. ‘Romance’ has multiple meanings. Romance is available in many points of living, many places of human cognition and emotion. Reading a good book or poetry is romance. Meeting a long lost friend is romance. Meeting one’s lover is romance. Running down the hill with the wind blowing in one’s face is romance. Seeing a river racing to meet the ocean is romance. Watching a one-year- old kid laughing uncontrollably seeing something funny is romance ...! Endless definitions. Endless points to have that sense filling up one’s heart and head from within. Endless possibilities of feeling genuinely and rather effervescently blissful ...! Poetry offers all these possibilities, so to say, and Whitman, therefore, talks of poetry and why we read and write it. For him, poetry, thus, is not a play of words in a deferred syntax. For him, poetry is a direct expression of soul’s inner song.