One of the poem's most famous and humorous couplets is, "Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" These lines express Whitman's radicalism, and they are used as an epigram at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's collection Howl. They are humorous because Whitman initially decides the best way to get through this metaphorical door is to unlock it (sounds reasonable), but then he says, oh, what the heck, and tears the entire door from its frame!