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Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
The publication of the first slim edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1855 was the debut of a masterpiece that shifted the course of American literary history. Refreshing and bold in both theme and style, the book underwent many revisions during Whitman's lifetime. For more than forty years Whitman produced multiple editions of Leaves of Grass, shaping the book into an ever-transforming kaleidoscope of poems. By his death in 1892, Leaves was a thick compendium that represented Whitman's vision of America over nearly the entire last half of the nineteenth century. Among the collection's best-known poems are "I Sing the Body Electric," "Song of Myself," and "O Captain! My Captain!," a metaphorical tribute to the slain Abraham Lincoln. |