a song for occupations

I liked this poem a lot and one of the parts that stood out to me was when Whitman says in like 89-92 "If you were not breathing and walking here where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes...orations and plays would be vacuums." Whitman is showing his equality and sameness to every reader by pointing out that he would not exist in the identity of a poet if we didn't exist. Therefore, we are just as important, if not more, than Whitman himself which seems to be a central theme in the poem.

In lines 1630-167 Whitman says,

      I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile...I do not
            advise you to stop,
      I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,
      But I say that none lead to greater or sadder or happier
            that those lead to.

I found these lines to be very beautiful and I think what he is saying is that it doesn't matter what it is that leads you in life or gives you purpose or what you look forward to that gets you through each day, but instead it is the action of purpose that is important.

The main differences I noticed in this poem throughout the various editions were a shift from using ellipsis to using dashes to connect ideas and sentences. In addition, the dashes that already existed in the 1855 edition became, for the most part, commas. This is similar to Whitman's changes in "Leaves of Grass." I think it further proves the ideas discussed in class regarding the increased anxiety that came along with a larger audience. Instead of the readers being people Whitman knew personally, there was suddenly a mass audience that he had less and less control over. So these grammatical changes, in addition to changing the look and style of the poem, also seem to suggest that he is attempting to take more control over how his text is going to be interpreted.

The most interesting change I noticed between the 1855 and the 1856 edition was in the lines:
   
      The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband!
      The daughter, and she is just as good as the son!
      The mother, and she is every bit as much the father! (36-39)

In the 1855 edition the commas were dashes and the exclamation points were commas. The use of the exclamation points really stood out to me, although I'm not entirely sure why.