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An episode from 4/19/22: From the opening line of the Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman announced that his great theme was unity: \u201cI celebrate myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.\u201d As the last two episodes show, his best poems on both love and death rise up out of this central belief in humanity\u2019s unity with nature and the animal world, and our unity as a human species, which crosses all barriers of race, religion, and belief. And finally, in perhaps his best poem, \u201cCrossing Brooklyn Ferry,\u201d that unity extends from the past, the present, and into the future.

Tonight, then, I read the best of Whitman\u2019s poems in this vein, which (for lack of a better word) I have simply called \u201cmystical.\u201d All of the poems can be found in the two recent books I edited, \u2060The Selected Short Poems of Walt Whitman\u2060, and \u2060The Selected Long Poems of Walt Whitman\u2060.

Short Poems:

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• Selections from \u201cSong of Myself\u201d
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• Assurances
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• Earth, My Likeness
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• Full of Life Now
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• To a Common Prostitute
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• Mother and Babe
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• O Me! O Life!
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• Sparkles from the Wheel
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• To Thee Old Cause!
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• A Clear Midnight
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• From Montauk Point
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• America
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• L. of G.\u2019s Purport
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• Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
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Long Poems:

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• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1:08:00)
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• Song of the Open Road (1:26:00)
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• A Song of the Rolling Earth (1:48:53)
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Don\u2019t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us\xa0on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books:\xa0Notes from the Grid,\xa0To the House of the Sun,\xa0The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and\xa0Bone Antler Stone.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to\xa0humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.