Through the history of the United States there have been a countless numbers of poets. With them came an equal number of writing styles. Certainly one of the most unique poets to write life's story through his own view of the world and with the ambition to do it was Walter Whitman. Greatly criticized by many readers of his work, Whitman was not a man to be deterred. Soon he would show the world that he had a voice, and that it spoke with a poet's words. "Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.".
Through his poetry, Whitman's "Song of Myself" makes the soul sensual and makes divine the flesh. In Whitman's time, the dichotomy between the soul and the body had been clearly defined by centuries of Western philosophy and theology. Today, the goodness of the soul and the badness of the flesh still remain a significant notion in contemporary thought. Even Whitman's literary predecessor, Emerson, chose to distinctly differentiate the soul from all nature. Whitman, however, chooses to reevaluate that relationship. His exploration of human sensuality, particularly human sexuality, is the tool with which he integrates the spirit with the flesh.
Whitman begins his synthesis of the soul and body through sexuality by establishing a relative equality between the two. He pronounces in previous stanzas, "You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself," and, "Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest." Here, he lays foundation for the basic egalitarianism with which he treats all aspects of his being for the rest of the poem. This equality includes not only his sexuality, but in broader terms, his soul and body. In the opening to section five, Whitman explicitly articulates that equality in the context of the body and soul: "I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.
