QUOTE:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Song of Myself, 51
INTRODUCTION:
In 9th grade I sat in a hospital room, waiting for surgery, browsing a small paperback.
Two lines from The Whitman Reader
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
Enough to send me spinning, exhilarated . . .
I would no longer . . . justify . . . anything! Gender norms, or science and poetry
swirling together in my head, or being illogical or illegitimate or whatever they thought
I was—
Very well then
. . . now, it’s Your problem.
And the kicker, the parenthetic kicker : (I am LARGE, I contain MULTITUDES).
As do we all!
(I still have that 50¢ Reader, edited by Maxwell Geismar.)
Not isolates or linears or logics – time and again, and in so many ways, we proudly
contradict ourselves and keep moving!