I Sing the Body Electric

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred, And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted, And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face. In 1855, when Whitman mortgaged his home to self-publish Leaves of Grass, it was only 12 poems. By the time he died, in 1892, it was over 400. The most famous of these works is I Sing the Body Electric, a long poem that tries to bridge the divide between the physical body and the soul, but moreover it’s a celebration. The body is, he says, nothing less than a miracle. As I’ve written elsewhere, I understand why people get into medicine - the body’s mechanisms are that endlessly fascinating. For me, that includes electricity itself.