that Whitman wants to do more than simply embrace poetically all of life. He also wants to transform and revitalize poetry itself, for he feels that poetry and literature have become too sterile. At the same time, it is clear at times that Whitman's optimism is unrealistic. He himself was heavily criticized for his excesses in writing in his lifetime, a fact which he seems to ignore when he writes, "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it" (Whitman 24). America, in fact, is not a country which is famous for its "affectionate absorption" of its poets or its poetry.
While Whitman may go overboard in his optimism, it is that very overblown attitude which gives the poems their strength. Above all, again, he means to celebrate all of life, beginning with himself as man and poet:
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you (Whitman 25).
We might read these lines and feel that Whitman is arrogant to write that we shall assume what he assumes, but if we open our hearts to Whitman, we will see that in fact he is saying that we are all together in this adventure of life, and that we enrich ourselves by seeing that fact. After all, it is in the nature of the poet himself to believe that he has something special to say to us, that he has a unique point of view. Whitman sees the poet as a sort of preacher of beauty, but instead of preaching from a pulpit above the crowd, he shows himself to be far more down-to-earth, celebrating sensuousness and even laziness in a way that would shame more traditional preachers: "I loafe and invite my soul,/ I lean and loafe at my ease . . . observing a spear of summer grass./ Houses and rooms are full of perfumes . . . I breathe the fragrance myself . . . The atmosphere is . . . for my mouth forever. . . I am in love with it,/ I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,/ I am m...