I Am the Poet

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The classic poem for this issue of The Fairfield Review was written by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892). With spring approaching, we are reminded anew to trust our senses. --egh

I Am the Poet
By Walt Whitman

I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition;
But that all the things seen are real,
The witness and albic dawn of things equally real
I have split the earth and the hard coal and rocks and the solid bed

of the sea
And went down to reconnoiter there a long time,
And bring back a report,
And I understand that those are positive and dense every one
And that what they seem to the child they are
And that the world is not joke,
Nor any part of it a sham.