lucaespo

Song of Myself, V   Walt Whitman  | lucaespo

O Captain! My Captain!  Walt Whitman  | lucaespo

Credo in te anima mia  Walt Whitman  | lucaespo

O capitano! Mio capitano!  Walt Whitman  | lucaespo

There was a time when poetry and music were one — when the poet’s voice rose not from the page but from the breath, from the living pulse of the heart. In this playlist, that ancient unity returns. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, sings again — his words lifted by melody, his vast spirit flowing into sound.

Here, the poetry of Leaves of Grass is reborn as music. Each track transforms Whitman’s free verse into a song of the soul, where the rhythm of his lines meets the rhythm of life itself. These are not adaptations but awakenings — living echoes of the man who wrote, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” And now, through these songs, he truly does.

The Vision of a Singing Poet

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) dreamed of a new kind of poetry — one that could contain the universe. His words were meant to be spoken aloud, to be sung under open skies and in crowded cities, to celebrate the human body and spirit as sacred. He was the poet of democracy, the singer of freedom, the prophet of the modern soul.

In his lifetime, Whitman’s poetry shocked and liberated in equal measure. He wrote of love, of desire, of death and rebirth, of the holiness of everyday life. His voice was the sound of America discovering itself — vast, contradictory, inclusive.

This playlist continues that discovery. It transforms Whitman’s language into sound once again, letting the poet’s breath become melody. Each song reimagines his verses not as distant relics of the nineteenth century, but as timeless music for the twenty-first — proof that the spirit of Leaves of Grass still breathes, still sings, still embraces the listener.

The Music of the Soul

Whitman believed that every person carries a divine song — a private hymn of being. “I hear America singing,” he wrote, and through these musical interpretations, we hear him singing back.

In each piece, the boundary between poetry and song disappears. The voice becomes an instrument of revelation; the words move like rivers.

Walt Whitman sings: The soul of America in music

lucaespo