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Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (Hardcover)

by Walt Whitman (Author), David S. Reynolds (Editor)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 184 pages
  • Publisher: OUP USA; 150 edition (5 May 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0195183428
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195183429
  • Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 16 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 248,863 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description
"I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease....observing a spear of summer grass." So begins Leaves of Grass, the first great American poem and indeed, to this day, the greatest and most essentially American poem in all our national literature. The publication of Leaves of Grass in July 1855 was a landmark event in literary history. Ralph Waldo Emerson judged the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." Nothing like the volume had ever appeared before. Everything about it--the unusual jacket and title page, the exuberant preface, the twelve free-flowing, untitled poems embracing every realm of experience--was new. The 1855 edition broke new ground in its relaxed style, which prefigured free verse; in its sexual candor; in its images of racial bonding and democratic togetherness; and in the intensity of its affirmation of the sanctity of the physical world. This Anniversary Edition captures the typeface, design and layout of the original edition supervised by Whitman himself. Today's readers get a sense of the "ur-text" of Leaves of Grass, the first version of this historic volume, before Whitman made many revisions of both format and style. The volume also boasts an afterword by Whitman authority David Reynolds, in which he discusses the 1855 edition in its social and cultural contexts: its background, its reception, and its contributions to literary history. There is also an appendix containing the early responses to the volume, including Emerson's letter, Whitman's three self-reviews, and the twenty other known reviews published in various newspapers and magazines. This special volume will be a must-have keepsake for fans of Whitman and lovers of American poetry.
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37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The 1855 Leaves of Grass, 28 Jul 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
This edition is very different to the later _Leaves of Grass_. Whitman was one of those poets who go on expanding their book of poems throughout their life. (Rather like Baudelaire with his _Flowers of Evil_.) Some people consider the earlier edition superior to the later: certainly it seems more radical, with unhierarchical punctuation (frequent use of . . . .), no titles for the poems, no numbering of sections (Cowley inserts titles and numbering in brackers for ease of reference), and, as the book came to its first readers, no author's name, only an engraving (reproduced in this book) of Whitman in an open shirt and jaunitly cocked hat!

What can anyone have thought opening this unattributed book and turning to the first poem, the 60 pages of what later was called 'Song of Myself''? This immense, fantastic, multi-facated, boastful, ambitious, tender work seems to me a work of art that really justifies the often misused work "original". It's amazing to think that while England had Tennyson, America had

Walt Whitman, an America, one of the roughs, a kosmos,

Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,

No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest.

Whitman then shouts:

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whitman represents America at what seems to me its best -- bold, immense, pioneering, multiracial, unsnobbish and unashamed to feel. The first edition is perhaps the best place to meet his poetry, as it isn't diluted by many of the later poems, some of which are very short -- more like epigrams (one-sided) than the many-sided long poems here. Whitman also revised his poems later on, adding "poetic" reversals of word-order and using a more "elevated" diction; whereas here the poems are vigorously colloquial ("I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world" he declares at one point).

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13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Leaves Of Grass, 13 April 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Leaves of Grass (Modern Library) (Hardcover)
I feel this book has the passion of life exploding in every word uttered by the poet. His unique style of transcending his thoughts to the readers liturally over powers my soul with sheer joy and love.
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12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Celebrating the passion of life!!, 2 May 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Leaves of Grass (Modern Library) (Hardcover)
In the three days I have had The Modern Library's edition of Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', it has become my favorite book. It is a beautiful celebration of the passions in life, awakening and tantilizing the reader as no other book of poetry has ever done (for me). I look forward to passing this beautiful book and its passion for life on to my children.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely wonderful!
This is poetry at it's very best, it is truly a life-changing experience. Leaves of grass is a book to treasure for a lifetime, a feast for the heart and mind every time you open... Read more
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