Leaves of Grass

Name: Leaves of Grass
Author: Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman · 1855

The book that invented American poetry. Whitman's long, cataloguing lines, his promiscuous embrace of everyone and everything, his insistence on the body as sacred, his democracy of subjects (grass, whores, ants, presidents, himself) broke all existing poetic rules and established new ones. "Song of Myself" remains the most comprehensive self-portrait in American literature. Every subsequent American poet has had to reckon with Whitman.

The case against

on the catalogs
“Three-fourths of Walt Whitman’s book is poetry as catalogues of auctioneers are poems. Whenever any general term is used, off the mind wanders on this fatal track, and an attempt is made to specify all lots included under it.”
unsigned review · The Examiner, London, 22 March 1856
on the patriotism
“It’s slow at times, a bit heavy on patriotic USA vibes”
four stars · Goodreads
on the egotism
“all this egocentrism comes with a price”
four stars · Goodreads
on the unabridged edition
“I wouldn’t recommend most readers start with this unabridged version of ‘Leaves’”
three stars · a book blog