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.' '.
/ .-. \
| / \ |
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_| |_\ /_| |_
.' | | '.
/ | () | \
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'-.__| |__.-'
| WALT |
| WHITMAN |
| 1819- |
| 1892 |
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LEAVES OF GRASS
A celebration of Walt Whitman, born this day in 1819
Leaves of Grass grew from 12 poems in 1855 to nearly 400 in the final "deathbed edition" of 1891-92. Here are some of the most celebrated:
The centerpiece: 1,346 lines celebrating self, body, soul, America, cosmos. 'I am large, I contain multitudes.'
A radical ode to the physical form. 'If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.'
Commuters past, present, and future united across the East River. Time collapsed into presence.
A mockingbird, a boy, the sea. The awakening of the poet. 'Death, death, death, death, death.'
Lincoln's elegy. Lilac, star, and bird. Perhaps his finest sustained work.
The other Lincoln elegy—conventional in form, enormously popular. Whitman came to resent its fame.
The 1855 prose preface: 'The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.'
'Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.' Freedom, democracy, comradeship.
Eight lines. A spider launching filaments, a soul seeking connection. Perfect in its brevity.
Mechanics, carpenters, masons, mothers—each singing their own song. The varied carols.
'What good amid these?' The question, and the answer: 'That you are here—that life exists.'
Eight lines. The lecture hall versus the silence of the stars. 'Look'd up in perfect silence.'
Civil War hospitals. 'Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested.'
Westward expansion as spiritual journey. Later criticized for its expansionist enthusiasm.
The Suez Canal, railroads, telegraph—modernity as spiritual connection. East meets West.