Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass, by American poet Walt Whitman, is a collection of poems, the most well-known of which are "Song of Myself", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", and his homage to the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain! My Captain!".

The book is notable for its frank delight in and praise of the senses, during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role therein. However, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.

There is no definitive edition of Leaves of Grass — Whitman continually revised his masterwork, adding poems to the book and, occasionally, removing them. The first edition, published on July 4, 1855 in Brooklyn, New York, was remarkable for its sense of "newness" — the style and subject matter were almost entirely unknown before its publication. Until the 1891-1892 "Death-Bed Edition", Whitman continued the process of manipulating, adding, and sometimes removing altogether the poems that comprised Leaves of Grass. Whitman paid for and did much of the typesetting for the first edition, which he published anonymously. However, again flouting convention, a picture of Whitman appeared on the front, the poet in shirt-sleeves, arms at his side and wearing a jaunty hat, embodying the everyman persona he assumes in the poetry.

In 1882, Whitman faced the possibility of legal prosecution over Leaves of Grass, on the ground that it was obscene. But the publicity arising from the charge against Leaves of Grass increased sales and Whitman's royalties from the book.

Late in life, Whitman used the phrase Leaves of Grass to refer to the calamus or sweet flag plant: “Leaves of Grass! The largest leaves of grass known! Calamus! Yes, that is Calamus! Profuse, rich, noble, upright, emotional!”^[1]

The 'Drum-Taps' section was added in 1865, after the death of Abraham Lincoln.

In 1890, the critic and gay intellectual John Addington Symonds proposed a homosexual reading of the 'Calamus' poems. Whitman, indignant, denied what he presumably considered an accusation of immorality.

Chronology

1855: First Edition. (Anonymous)
1856: Second Edition. (Signed) Adds Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.
1860: Third Edition Adds Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.
1867: Fourth Edition Adds When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom?d.
1871: Fifth Edition Adds Passage to India.
1875: Centeniall Edition
1881: Seventh Edition
1889: Eighth Edition
1891: Ninth Edition (Sometimes called the Authorized or Death-Bed Edition.)

In 1868, a much-diminished selection from Leaves of Grass, entitled Poems of Walt Whitman, was published by William Rosetti in England.

Sample: from "I Sing The Body Electric"

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?