Whitman and Stevens: Certain Phenomena of Sound

Last night in fact, I could not fall asleep again because of my health's failures, and I found myself reciting poetry. Since I was a little one, I have a remarkable memory in terms of recalling poetic texts. [...]person address is of course a major hallmark of Whitman's poetry; it is hardly an accident that the first word of "Song of Myself" is "I" and the last word "you." An even more audible syntactic source for Stevens are Whitman's long participial sentences, like the one that opens "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," or several that occur in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd": Passing the visions, passing the night, Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring. [...]if, but if there be something more to love, The smoke of my own breath, Something in now a senseless syllable, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, A shadow in the mind, a flourisher of sounds resembling sounds, efflorisant, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, Approaching the feelings or come down from them, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark color 'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, These other shadows, not in the mind, players of aphonies, The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, Tuned in from zero and beyond, futura's fuddle-fiddling lumps, But if there be something more to love, amen, Amen to the feelings about familiar things, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The blessed regal dropped in daggers' dew, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, Amen to thought, our singular skeleton, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, Salt-flicker, amen to our accustomed cell, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun, The