This book is a hold-over from my college days. The only reason this is still on my shelf is because it is considered a literary classic. I don't think this is anything I'll read again, but you never know. ( )

I so want to like this and I try and I try. But I don't. Two stars because I feel like it's my fault. ( )

Truly remarkable book. From a time when thinkers, ponderers, and wonderers had time to think and write Whitman evoked thoughts and feelings from deep within in his Leaves of Grass. It seemed like a sentimental good-bye to pastoral America while recognizes the rush of forces that was to come. His selected prose was a look at another time so different yet with people's lives so similar to our own. It took two years of bathroom reading to finish this and it was well worth the effort. ( )

You may like Walt Whitman or you may not, but you can't claim to know American literature if you've never read Whitman. There it is. Get used to it. If it helps any, remember: you only have to do it once. Wear a bib, you won't get any on ya! ( )

Best read on a sunny September or October day when you're ripe for peak experience, dilation of the soul. Full of promise, power, gusts of the sublime; home.