Product Description

Walt Whitman's verse gave the poetry of America a distinctive national voice. It reflects the unique vitality of the new nation, the vastness of the land and the emergence of a sometimes troubled consciousness, communicated in language and idiom regarded by many at the time as shocking. Whitman's poems are organic and free flowing, fit into no previously defined genre and skilfully combine autobiographical, sociological and religious themes with lyrical sensuality. His verse is a fitting celebration of a new breed of American and includes Song of Myself, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the celebratory Passage to India, and his fine elegy for the assassinated President Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #136103 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Customer Reviews

Walt Whitman's Complete Works
Among the many American authors and poets, the name Walt Whitman stands out as a giant. He single-handedly transformed the world of American poetry with his one and only collection, Leaves of Grass. Leaves of Grass, however, is not one collection between two covers. Rather, it is a collection of collections. Poems like "When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom'd", "O Captain, My Captain", and "I Hear America Singing" have forever been imprinted in the American psyche as brilliant, original works of literature. This book not only features Leaves of Grass, but also discarded poems and unpublished poems that were not published in the book. This book is a definitive introduction to the works of one America's greatest literary giants.

Poetry Forever
Leaves of Grass redirected my young life.

This creative style of Whitman and all his comtempories still thrills me.

--retired English teacher and published poet.