Others May Praise What They Like

Others May Praise What They Like - context Summary

From the Western Rivers

This short Leaves of Grass lyric locates Whitman’s critical stance in a specific landscape. Speaking from the banks of the Missouri, he refuses to praise art or anything else until it has absorbed and re‑expressed the river’s atmosphere and the western prairie scent. The poem registers Whitman’s belief that authentic American art must be rooted in—and breathe out—the physical, local qualities of the western landscape.