Oscar Triggs feels that Walt Whitman's
“Song of Myself” is Leaves of Grass in epitome. No doubt this poem illustrates Whitman's theme and purpose—and methods of attaining them—as well as any other poem he wrote. Perhaps the poem's synoptic quality is responsible for much critical work that attempts to explain the unity of the poem. But too often the critic's analysis superimposes a unity that is not explicitly sUpported by the poem or by any of Whitman's prose explanations of it. My purpose is first to demonstrate from Whitman's notations that his “indirect expression,” for psychological and democratic reasons, calls for reciprocity between the poet and the reader in order to achieve Whitman's desired result, and second to analyze “Song of Myself” in the light of the organic and COsmic unity that a reader's reciprocity gives to the poem.