imperfect bodies

My favorite of the Whitman poems that we have read is “To a Historian,” mostly because I think that it really speaks to the reasons that Whitman felt writing Leaves of grass was necessary, and partly because it doesn't focus so much on bodies. The poem talks about celebrating the common man, about really doing what a historian means to do when they study history, telling the story of the populous.

I found the focus on perfect, well built bodies a little uncomfortable for me. It's not the talking about body parts or the sexual bits, believe me, I don't mind. It's the focus on all of the parts being perfect, and on that perfection somehow translating into a well pleasing soul that makes me uncomfortable. I understand that Whitman was trying to focus on the things that we have common across people, and I guess that he thought that the appreciation of the human form would be one of them. And there I guess he was accurate, but it is the body soul connection that I have trouble with. I have never thought of the perfect body implying a perfect soul because I don't think that such a claim has any basis in truth, and the implication that Whitman thought so makes me distrust him a little. I don't think that the opposite bias has much truth to it either – the bias that those with broken bodies have some kind of enlarged or more perfect soul. Ignoring those with less than perfect bodies in “I Hear America Singing” is disconcerting. Aren't there imperfect bodies in America?

That being said, books or poems featuring disability or chronic illness weren't all that common in the 19th century, and feminine frailty was the closest that most authors got to portraying disabled characters. Perhaps Whitman's exclusion of the imperfect American bodies was more a product of the times and not a purposeful thing.