Cantos Related

Cantos 21-24 are cantos that express some very strange ideas and thoughts that Whittman has. These thoughts include him having sex with the the earth and ocean. These thoughts are strange in today's time and even stranger in the time period he is writing. These thoughts seem as though they do not fit with the he rest of the poem but they actually carry over some of Whittman's thoughts. Throughout his poem he had explained ideas and thoughts that very few people, if any, have expressed. He does this when he explains everyone's importance in the world and now again in these cantos when he explain his sexual relationships, his love of body odor, and his worshiping of his own body. An even more blaring similarity between this group of cantos and the whole poem is his giving voice to those people who are not usually heard; the carpenter and prostitute in canto 12 and the "forbidden voices" in canto 24.