Leaves of Grass
1855
- manuscripts
- united states civil war, 1861-1865
- gay poets
- presidents
- poetry
- american poets
- english poetry
- american poetry
- mysticism
- classic literature
The story
**Leaves of Grass** is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. First published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting *Leaves of Grass*, revising it multiple times until his death. There have been held to be either six or nine individual editions of Leaves of Grass, the count varying depending on how they are distinguished.[2] This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades—the first edition being a small book of twelve poems, and the last, a compilation of over 400. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass))
What it’s like
Long, unhurried lines that breathe like a walk in open air, with catalogues of grass, crowds, harbors, prairie, and bodies piled up until the page feels full of weather. The voice is expansive and confiding, sometimes shouting with joy, sometimes dropping into hush, and the sensory world is vivid and outdoors: sunlight on water, dust on roads, the smell of cut hay, the noise of city streets. Early sections feel buoyant and self-delighted, while the poems written during and after the Civil War turn quieter and more elegiac, with hospital wards and soldiers' faces rendered in plain, tender detail. Reading it is slow and rhythmic rather than plotted, best done in short sittings, with the book open on a porch or in a park. Its emotional register runs from ecstatic to mournful, with a steady undercurrent of mysticism and an insistence on the worth of ordinary people. Intensity is low in violence, which appears as war's aftermath rather than graphic scenes, but frank physical and sexual imagery runs through the early poems, and the tone is open rather than coy. It suits readers who want big-hearted, sensory poetry that makes the wide world feel close, and who don't mind a voice that talks to them directly.
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