Is the poem simply a tedious enumeration of body parts, or do the lines achieve some kind of rhythmic cadence?

9

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and

women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of
you are to stand or fall with the likes of
the soul, (and that they are the
soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and

that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's,
husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems,

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes,
eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the
lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks,
temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong
shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of
the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,

finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of
the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the
backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,

man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk
above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles,
instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the
shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your
body or of any one's body, male
or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies,
heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is
a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples,
breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and
risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy
one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The
beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
toward the
knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the

marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the
soul!

In this section of the poem, I
believe Whitman is listing body parts in order to celebrate the body from head to toe,
not necessarily for a rhythmic, poetic effect. At the beginning of the section, he
states that he will not desert any part of the body of man or woman, and that the parts
of the body will "stand or fall" with the soul, and with his poem. In stating this, I
believe Whitman knew the list might be considered tedious by some, and I thin kthis was
his point in including it- to give each part of the body credit for existing. Each part
of the body is now part of his poem just as the parts of the body also construct an
outer representation of the soul.