Leaves of Grass

Wow. This book. It's an exultant ode to America, nature, love, sex, equality, class, justice, race, religion, relationships. Written in 1855, Whitman's ideas are still fresh and relevant, 170 years later. He writes like no one else. Elegiac and colloquial, Whitman weaves the plainspoken with the lyrical. It really took me out of my head, and maybe turned it upside down, or sideways, backwards, everything. Reading this book was an intensely immersive experience for me. It was pure poetry, joyful and challenging and eloquent and passionate.

Whitman is all encompassing, exhausting, full of himself, and lovely, and true. He isn't perfect, his chants are invocations, a paean to human frailty and the human drive to sink below and, with blessings, rise above; but he requires you to read him as he defines. To really enjoy what Whitman has to offer you must open yourself to a new way of reading, a new way of thinking and feeling These aren't just poems. This is an epic poetic narrative of the birth pangs of an entire nation. And in being those things you must surrender yourself to the universality of Whitman's particulars.

Granted, in our cynical age of orange presidents and soul destroying social media, it can be easy (too easy) to look at Whitman and parse him naive. He isn't. show more Whitman is as much a scholar of human failure and degradation as human drive and hope and fortune. If anything, Whitman became a victim of his own success, a legacy somewhat besmirched by too many people reading him too simplistically, think Robert Frost and his "Two Paths Diverged" syndrome.

He was and is a test. But I thoroughly enjoyed Whitman's Leaves, and can now fully understand and appreciate its place within the American and international literary canon. show less

2011 will go down, for me, as The Year Ben Caught Up On His Classics. Partly due to shame at continually seeing "Top 100" lists (B&N, Modern Library, etc.) of which I had invariably only read about 10, partly due to increased reading time thanks to becoming a train commuter, but mostly due to buying an e-reader and suddenly having easy, free access to public domain material, I've spent a good chunk of this year reading famous old books. Some of them were great; others, mediocre. Some of them have aged beautifully; others now seem quaint, silly, or merely boring.

In any event, whether I've enjoyed the books or not, when I sit down to review them, I do so knowing that my better-read friends have probably already read them, often decades show more ago. And thus it is with Leaves of Grass. There's nothing I'm going to be able to say to shed any new light on a work that's been loved, hated, studied and scrutinized for over a century, and has had numerous critical works written about it. So I won't even try. But here are a few personal observations, in lazy man's bullet points, because I write paragraphs for a living and I'm on vacation right now:

- This is a warm, beautiful collection of writings. Whitman makes constant references to throwing his arm around you, the reader, and the tone of the writing bears that out. Walt is the drunk guy at the party who really loves you, maaaaaannnnn, and keeps giving you hugs.
- I love how he manages to give structure to his poems. "Free verse" is really a misnomer, I think, because the verse is musical and wonderfully well-crafted. Shorn of the restrictions of meter or rhyme, Whitman makes amazing use of alliteration and psalm-like repetition to impart rhythm. These are lovely poems to read out loud.
- This stuff must have been scandalously graphic for the time period. There's a lot of throbbing and sliding going on. I can see why Emily Dickinson hated it.
- It's interesting how Whitman's persona and point of view subtly shift: from omnipotent and omniscient, to solipsistic; from being above all, to being one with everything. One moment he's a silent, ghostly observer, separate from the observed, and the next moment he's just one more microscopic cell in the sweaty body of humanity.

Leaves of Grass is so intense that it actually started to burn a bit by the end, an overstimulated, almost snowblind feeling. I suppose that's to be expected when you read in a few dozen hours what took a lifetime to write. I feel as though this is a book I will come back to for small doses, re-savoring favorite passages when the occasion and mood call for it. Wise, kind, funny, sexy, generous, and passionate. I'm sorry I waited 38 years to let Walt sound his barbarian yawp across the screen of my Kindle. show less

I'm just going to say it: Walt Whitman was the King of List Poems. (At least, that's how I think of them.)

He does tend to get repetitive after a while, so I certainly wasn't able to read this in one sitting... But I've always thought that poetry was meant to be savored a little at a time.

Whitman will never be one of my favorite poets, but he certainly excelled at his craft. I enjoyed seeing the evolution of his writing as his life progressed, especially since he kept adding on to Leaves of Grass every so often.

My favorite of his poems will always be "Song of the Open Road" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." I found a few more I really enjoy upon completion of this book though: "A Clear Midnight," "Out of May's Shows show more Selected," "The Voice of the Rain," and "A Prairie Sunset."

Whitman is a classic American poet and I'm glad I finally took the time to read this seminal work. I can't say I'll ever read it in its entirety again, but I'll definitely occasionally enjoy the poems I mentioned when my mood suits! show less

yes, its beautiful and inspiring and whatnot

i suppose i dont feel like walt's radical equanimity and universal love have much to offer the present moment in the US. like, ya i get that it must have been super subversive for the time, thats rad and all, but walt only gets as far as "mb... criminals and poor ppl r not bad," never quite reaching "mb... police and rich ppl r bad"

yes im being reductive but frankly idgaf. like, this sort of even-handedness can only do so much, can only go so far. at least nietzsche transforms his ultra-individualism into a clarion call for action and vibrant life. i certainly like walt's sort of existentialism better than nietzsche's, but damn walt just makes it so fucking BORING, so content w the world as it show more is! nietzsche, in his refutation of schopenhauer and the dharmic traditions, attempted to find a role for striving, for desire, for ego within the physical world of direct unmediated sensation. when this centered direction is taken out of existentialism, we're left w a bland acceptance of the world of illusions, a sad refusal to acknowledge to reality of suffering that suffuses all, in its horrifying depth

several passages reminded me of this famous dril tweet:

the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good and bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron." (June 1, 2014) show less

It is easy, and periodically fashionable to take Whitman for granted. Yes he is shamelessly self-involved and often goofy. He is also -- and here's the point, brothers and sisters -- continually amazing, and very good company. As with Bruckner Symphonies and the poems of Homer, there will always be the vexing question of which text is best. This particular edition is that, but its occasional inadequacies are more than covered by the wonderful illustrations by Lewis C. Daniel, an artist who dserved better than the obscurity into whic he has fallen.

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the show more silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

So Walt Whitman instructs us in the Preface to the 1855 edition of his seminal and landmark book of poetry, Leaves of Grass. This is why I love him. Even 160 years later, the book still strikes like a lightning bolt of profundity. At the time of publishing, no less a personage than Emerson stated in a letter to Whitman that

"I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass”…I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion…"

In her introduction, Helen Vendler, writes that another hero of mine, Thoreau, said

In an 1856 letter, Thoreau, after an initial flinching at Whitman’s candor (“It is as if the beasts spoke”) continued by saying “He is awfully good”, and with an early insight, suggested that Whitman’s apparent “egoism” was earned: “He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.”

Whitman speaks to everyone about everyday things without pretense and in language that is understandable to the masses. He does it in unrhymed free verse without the sometimes intimidating formal structure of other poets and poetry. He addresses issues that were groundbreaking at the time. Some may seem mundane now, some have new urgency or interpretations within his lines, and some need new poets, writers, artists, activists, and everyday people to carry the torch forward.

There is too much that I love here. I can only touch on some of the flashes of genius that have always touched me, and others that strike me with new meaning each time I open the book depending on what my country, culture, or I am struggling with when I reread him.

For example, in other writing and volunteer work I have been involved in the issues of body image and imposed gender expectations have been front and center. But no worries, even back when body image was not necessarily a articulated concept, I find that Walt has covered it:

"The bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,
They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and respond
to them and love them."

Gender expectations? Sexuality? No problem. Way before androgyny and choosing personal pronouns, Walt was mixing his pronouns and confusing believers in the sexual binary with his poetry of the gray area in between:

"If you meet some stranger in the street and love him or her, do I not often
meet strangers in the street and love them?"

"Darkness you are gentler than my lover….his flesh was sweaty and
panting.
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me."

"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am
touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.
If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body;
Translucent mould of me it shall be you,
Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you,
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale stripping of my life;
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you.
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded
duplicate eggs, it shall be you.
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;
Sun so generous it shall be you,
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding
paths, it shall be you,
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall
be you."

"My lovers suffocate me!
Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls....coming naked to me at
night,
Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river....swinging and chirping
over my head,
Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush,
Or while I swim in the bath....or drink from the pump at the corner....
or the curtain is down at the opera...or I glimpse at a woman's
face in the railroad car;
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to
be mine."

"Come closer to me,
Push close my lovers and take the best I possess,
Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess."

"What is known I strip away...I launch all men and women forward with
me into the unknown. "

If there is one thing I don’t connect with Walt on, it is his occasional jingoist digressions while singing his nationalistic praise of the United States. But bear with the poet, he has much good advice that our country needs to hear. Confused about our immigrant past or wanting to scapegoat the latest group to want to come here? Walt says,

"Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations."

Dismissing the importance of literature and the arts? Alas Whitman’s vision has not quite come to pass…

"Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."

Need encouragement to fight for your particular marginalized rights? Walt has you covered there too:

"Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom....in
its turn to bear seed.
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish."

Morality and spirituality? Whitman was well read in the western canon and drew off of Christian and jewish sacred writings but his writings also seem to reflect some of the eastern beliefs and ideas. I hear the Tao in some of his verses.

"The vulgar and the refined....what you call sin and what you call
goodness....to think how wide the difference;
To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference."

"I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground....the weeds of the sea have....
the animals"

The beautiful thing about Whitman’s poetry is that it is affirming poetry that most people will find some affirmation within. What you pull out of and what you get from reading Leaves of Grass depends on your own personal history and experience.

My love for Whitman makes resisting new editions especially hard, particularly fine press editions but also quirky new ones like the recent Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself. The Arion Press edition was a no-brainer.

In keeping with Whitman’s desire for his “barbaric yawp” to appeal to the masses, this 100th Arion Press edition was kept simple but elegant. No converting Whitman into a livre de artiste here. The illustrations are confined to the familiar portrait of Walt from the original edition and an image of grass by Arion Press binder Rochelle Youk. The binding is beautiful with oak veneered boards and green Nigerian goatskin. The book block and spine are nicely rounded, a welcome departure from the disappointingly frequent flat spine of recent Arion books. My one nit with the design is that the titling on the spine of the book is very fine and hard to read. I would have liked the title to stand out as boldly and saucily as Whitman does in his portrait. The book is cased in a nicely done and equally elegant slipcase. As usual with me, the paper is the clincher, a special 1985 run of Langley from the Barcham Green Mill with watermarks of the mill and of the Arion Press’ lyre pressmark. And rough deckle edge seems like just the right touch for Leaves of Grass.

In her lucid foreword, Helen Vendler states that the opening poem, which later was named “Song of Myself”, is “…the first masterpiece of American poetry, and has influenced not only every subsequent generation of American writers but also foreign poets from Russia to Chile. Indeed, I love finding references to Whitman among the words of writers. One of my favorite recent poems of homage to Whitman is by Rudulfo Anaya. I found “Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico” in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. It’s a long poem and worth seeking out. I’ll just quote a small part:

"Hold me in the safety of your arms, wise poet, old poet,
Abuelo de todos. Your fingers stir my memory."

Leaves of Grass should be our National Poem, if such a thing existed, though I’m not sure we still deserve it, if ever we did. Walt might have a few things to say about how our nation has strayed. But that is part of the beauty of Whitman’s gift. He gives this gift freely, without judgment of our need or worth. Open the gift in whatever form you can: fine or trade edition, used or new, graphic adaptation, paperback, e-book. Take a turn together….it will repay you.

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you."

AVAILABILITY: The Arion Press edition is limited to 275 copies at a price of $1250. It was almost instantly out of print. show less