I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness—
I outline, suggest, hint,
The text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or framework,
Leaving each reader eligible to form the resultant-poem for herself or himself.
The reader will always have his or her part to do, just as much as I have had mine,
I tell what I see—then each may make up the rest for himself,
The reader must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem.

The best of reading is not so much in the information it conveys as the thoughts it suggests. The greatest poet is not he who has done the best; it is he who suggests the most, who in his works most stimulates the reader’s imagination and reflection, who excites him the most himself to poetize.
A great many of my readers credit my writings with things that do not attach to the writings themselves but to the persons who read them—things they supply, bring with them.

Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
Stupid and wise thinker, parents and offspring,
Author and schoolboy—draw nigh and commence:
Has anyone fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full?
To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring,
He brings neither cessation or sheltered fatness and ease,
But rather a beginning.
A great poem is no finish to a man or woman,
It is no lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still—
Thenceforward is no rest.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else.
Poems are to arouse the reason, suggest, give freedom, strength, muscle, candor to any person that reads them;
They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
Whom they take they take into space, to see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums,
To behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith,
Till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again.

So I seek less to state or display any theme or thought,
And more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the theme or thought,
There to pursue your own flight.
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,
To arouse and initiate, more than to define or finish,
I but write one or two indicative words for the future,
To you I bring them here, and now resign them, with all their blots,
To image back the process for your use.
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own truth,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it, and put it in the windows of your brain,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
Indeed, if it were not for you, what would I be?
The good of you is not in me,
The good of you is altogether in yourself,
I only seek to put you in rapport,
Expecting the main things from you.
Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand the matter, but largely supply it—
Can I beget a child for you?

Listener up there! What have you to confide to me?
Look in my face, talk honestly,
No one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer,
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

You are asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Don’t ask me any questions. I am not fond of questions—any questions, in short, that require answers. Questioners are my abomination. It is always: what do you think about religion? or, what are your opinions about politics? or, do you believe in immortality? and so on, with a list that sets me sick.

My own feeling about my book is that there is affinity between many of these piece and those blueberries—their stolid and deaf repugnance to answering questions, the nearest, dearest trait affinity of all.
It makes (tries to make) every fellow see himself, and see that he has got to work out his salvation himself—has got to pull the oars and hold the plow, or swing the axe, himself—and assists that person to see the realities for himself in his own way, with his own individuality, and after his own fashion.

The process of reading is not a half-sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise,
A gymnast’s struggle, in the strong gymnasia of the mind.
I am the teacher of athletes,
I give you an inkling,
Naught made and finished by me for you, but only hinted,
To be made by you, and indeed from you, by robust exercise.

Gist of my books: To give others, readers, people, the materials to decide for themselves,
And know, or grow toward knowing, with cleanliness and strength.
The conditions are simple, spiritual, physical, close at hand,
They are long and arduous and require faith,
They exist altogether with the taught, and not with the teaching or teacher;
Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does.

The last word or whisper still remains to be breathed,
For you whoever you are, with my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper:
I hereby bequeath to you, whoe’er you are, to form and breathe whisperings for yourself,
You must do the work, to really make the poems sing,
Which, if you truly do, I promise you return and satisfaction, earned by yourself,
Far more than ever book before has given you.

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe—
From this book yourself, before unknown, shall rise up and be revealed.

NEXT: YOU, THE POET, AND THE FUTURE

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).