Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“The Song of A: Every Day and the Poetry of Walt Whitman”

While learning about a classic poem of American literature, students will flex their creative muscles as they imagine a dialogue between the formless A with the all-encompassing “I” from Walt Whitman’s groundbreaking poem “Song of Myself.”

Published in 1855 in his seminal poetry collection Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself”  is an epic poem by Walt Whitman that celebrates life, nature, and the mysteries of the universe. The narrator is a shapeshifting “I,” and the poem is famous for lines such as these:

• "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." (Section 1)
• "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them" (Section 20)
• "It is you talking just as much as myself... I act as the tongue of you" (Section 47)
• "I am large, I contain multitudes." (Section 51)

In these lines, you might recognize something similar to what A describes in Every Day as “enormity,” and you may also see something of a Fluid Identity, which is explored at length in the character of A.