All Hail Whitman

In poems 11 to 20 of Leaves of Grass, Whitman is inclusively mimetic: He attempts to represent everyone’s reality. This purpose is epitomized in poem 15, where the author, or everyone, is describing everyone’s reality without trouble because all reality is his reality; from the “pure contralto [who] sings in his organ loft” (15), to the “old husband [who] sleeps by his wife, and the young husband [who] sleeps by his wife” (15), the author, or everyone, as he so explained in the first poem, is everyone and everything and every possible situation at once.

I perceive the image that the author promotes of himself as being of an omnipresent being, who exists in all always. He also describes the unity of everything, much like Hinduism does. At the same time, he has a romantic air, for he celebrates the American landscapes in some of his poems such as number 16. What is his purpose in doing so? Is a purpose even required? Why would we require it?