Sounding a Barbaric YAWP

Read to them. You must read to them so their vocabulary will grow, and large vocabularies directly correlate to academic success at all stages of life...

Or something like that.

So I read to him.

The first day we had him home I was holding him and went to my bookshelf. What should it should it be, what should it be? My eyes darted along the hundreds of spines.

Eventually it became clear. "Of course!" I told him, like he really cared. I'd located my tattered copy of Leaves of Grass.

I opened to "Song of Myself" and started reading:

          *
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
          *

Seven or eight pages I read, and his eyes were fixated on my voice, the sounds being created by my tongue and lips. It was magical.

The next night I opened Leaves of Grass to a different section and started reading "Pioneers! O Pioneers!"

Holy cow does it sound cool to read aloud! Each tiny idea stanza ends with the exultation phrase "Pioneers! O pioneers!"

         *
     O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendshiop,
Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the formost,
     Pioneers! O pioneers!
         *

And:

         *
     We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
      Pioneers! O pioneers!
         *

The next day we tackled Walt's trip to "Mendocino Country" as he calls it, for the "Song of the Redwood."

But during all this, the reality set in for me.

I've been told, during my AP English class in high school, during my college literature classes (which were minimal considering my math major-ness), and in other forms of paying-attention-to-what-"experts"-say: Walt Whitman is an American Treasure, genius, and master poet.

But reading it aloud I realized the reality: WALT WHITMAN IS A FREAKING GENIUS! Hearing the words and intonations of the man was good, I figured, for my boy Cassius, but I never thought it would affect me.

Now that I'm mature enough to understand the heart of what Uncle Walt was trying to get at, it truly speaks to me, and I'm amazed by what the dude was doing with words-as-Art.

Hey, newsflash: WALT WHITMAN IS A NATIONAL TREASURE!

I was just a little late to wrapping my hairy head around the whole enchilada.