Product Description

Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves of Grass, he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and physiological allusions as `disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed'. A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour of the American nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #494862 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review
"Its convenience is outstanding and can easily fit into a coat pocket. Yet the print is civilized and the accompanying editorial and biographical material, first-rate. I plan to use it and to recommentd it."--David Baldwin, Hartwick College
"Introduction in a valuable critical contribution."--Cameron Nickels, James Madison University
"I have used several of the Oxford World's Classics in my courses, and I like them very much. They are well edited, but equally important, they are pleasant books to hold and read, more so than Penguin and Signet. When I have a choice, I go for the Oxford World's Classics."--Kelley Griffith, University of North Carolina
"Very nice reprint. The introduction is well written and informative."--Jeff Cupp, Troy State University

Customer Reviews

The 1855 Leaves of Grass
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).

Leaves Of Grass
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.

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 it. Whitman's soul is in direct communion with yours as he weaves a tapestry of wonder and joy on every page. His words burn deep and enter into the very fibre of your being and I guarantee that once you are touched by walt's magic you will never be the same...