Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman



Blurb:

When Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems--but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition.

This beautifully-designed volume presents the original edition Leaves of Grass in its entirety, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.

This book has been in my physical stash for years, probably getting close to 10 years at this point. Thanks to this challenge, I finally got around to reading it. However, not going to lie - I struggled with it. The author's forward was thirty pages long and seemed to be one long stream of consciousness about how wonderful poets are. The first poem was 60 pages long.

However, the language was amazing, so evocative. Being published in 1855, I had a hard time deciding if he was an abolitionist or not. Some lines seemed a little bit romanticizing slavery, but others were definitely against it. I'm glad I read it though, and now it can stop accusing me of neglect.

With this book, I have a blackout! Yay!!