Oh frypans, oh water bottles, oh hawaii shirts, oh ukuleles-" Reader: "Ukuleles? And be so negative? I am being joyful here! I also love all of the people! I love the Americans! I also love the Europeans! The African and Asian barbarians, the squaws and the-" Reader: "Whoa, hey, they ain't barbarians and don't call 'em squaws.
If only 'cause it's better for you. I love them! I love them all! They are all as good as the other! Men as women and women as men! The whites as the slaves and the slaves as the whites! Why would you call them barbarians or slaves at all? That's not what they are, it's what was forced on them by others. And they are all represented in me! And an American, the noblest and bestest and highest, bravest and kindest-" Reader: "I call bullshit.
There's plenty other editions of you out there. And I love you. Dec 21, Jan rated it it was amazing Shelves: literatuur , religion-spirituality , literatuur-amerika , literatuur-celebrant , poetry. The verses in this little book are certainly world affirming in a cosmopolitan sense.
All people are connected by the same body and all are blessed by the same divine soul. Walt makes this clear by sometimes annoyingly long lists of people and their occupations. This broad empathy for, basically the whole universe, is addicitive.
I felt my heart glowing while reading. Ho 'Walt in love with the world' would have been a better title. However, when I layed the book down I was deeply unsatisfied. The reason being, that Walts main point is, 'all is perfect'. For me this felt like some escapism that causes a paradox in Walt's poetry.
On the one hand he says 'yes! I would definitely recommend this book, since it connects the body and the spiritual in exciting ways it contains sex ; and recognizes that what is equal in all man. To live, feel, have blood, to see beauty, to be mothers and fathers of fathers and mothers. Aug 16, Sam Middleton rated it did not like it. Nearly all of 'Leaves of Grass' was completely lost on me.
I saw red flags from the off, as Waltman's introduction to the collection is nothing more than dense word-salad. The poetry did little more to engage me.
Waltman loves writing lists - lists of things and lists of vaguely presented ideas - and the writing reads more like prose than poetry due to its lack of rhythm and lengthy lines. His language choices come across as either overly vague and complex with the outcome of obscuring meaning Nearly all of 'Leaves of Grass' was completely lost on me.
His language choices come across as either overly vague and complex with the outcome of obscuring meaning or bafflingly simplistic so as to breath barely any life into the images he presents. From 'To Think of Time' onwards, there were fleeting and sporadic sections that I appreciated and I enjoyed 'Who Learns My Lessons Complete' from start to finish , but the vast majority of this collection did very little for me. If I had spark notes on hand and felt a desire to spend more time with the collection Malcolm Cowley's introduction looks like it could be of help , I'd probably increase my understanding and appreciation of the poems.
However, based on my initial reading of the collection, I don't feel inspired to do so anytime soon. Jun 08, Caitlin Conlon rated it liked it.
Jul 27, Regitze rated it really liked it Shelves: writtens , library-books , poetry , 4-stars , read Beautiful words about Human beings, at once both so personal to Whitman and strangely universal.
If I'm honest, I think that I read this thing too fast, this book and these poems deserve more attention than I was able to give it at this time. But I am definitely going to read it again. And again.
May 05, Des Small rated it it was amazing. Of all the great poets, Whitman is the one who most leaves the reader wanting less, and this first edition is as less as the Leaves of Grass ever got. He broke the new wood; he unleashed the loose baggy monster school of American verse; and if he goes on a bit, very well then, he goes on a bit.
Jun 15, Ostrava rated it it was amazing Shelves: allstars , poetry , bokklubben. I remember a time where I was as peaceful as Withman seemed here, but those days seem so long ago now. I should reread some of these in celebration when life gets a little easier Jan 16, Lon rated it it was amazing. How do you put a frame around this cosmos called Leaves of Grass? I feel like a tailor taking measurements for a blue whale, or a taxonomist classifying the whole of life.
The lines echo in my head, "Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? Let me just say that Whitman's poems, taken together, provide a glimpse of divine union and omnipresence no less breathtaking in How do you put a frame around this cosmos called Leaves of Grass?
Let me just say that Whitman's poems, taken together, provide a glimpse of divine union and omnipresence no less breathtaking in scope than the vision Krishna revealed to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. For the first time, I sensed Whitman's intoxication with life, his recognition that, to the mystically united soul, there are no more boundaries between self and universe.
Here are some favorite lines: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots", "And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.
View all 4 comments. Nov 22, George rated it it was amazing Shelves: poetry , favorites. I hadn't read any Whitman before I jumped into "Leaves of Grass," so the first lines of "Song of Myself" were a bit of a shock: I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
The thing that struck me was the sheer intimacy of Whitman's poetry. He's not just speaking to us in a figurative sense; often he literally speaks to the reader. A constant theme woven throughout the poems is just how amazing it is that through t I hadn't read any Whitman before I jumped into "Leaves of Grass," so the first lines of "Song of Myself" were a bit of a shock: I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
A constant theme woven throughout the poems is just how amazing it is that through the medium of printed words, two people can connect to each other, regardless of time or space. Some poetry feels remote and hard to interact with; beautiful in the way old photographs or Greek vases are beautiful, combining otherworldly delicacy with a sense of nostalgia and age. This is not Whitman. When however, you actively search for queer subtext, you can find it practically everywhere.
A final wonderful thing about Whitman is how simply beautiful his writing is. Open practically any page of one of his works and you're likely to find some something wonderful.
Of course, nothing can ever be perfect; some of Whitman's poems are vague and repetitive, and his inability to reconcile the all-encompassing compassion of his poetry with the realities of life for Black Americans in the nineteenth century should also be addressed also, his original introduction to "Leaves of Grass" is practically unreadable; it took me an hour to get through.
To finish off this review, here's a selection of my favorite poems by Whitman, and since my edition also included a selection of Whitman's poems published after the original edition of Leaves of Grass, I'll include a few of those too. Mar 15, Maria rated it really liked it Shelves: books-i-own , read-in-english , poetry , Have you heard the news? May 20, billyskye rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. Something about the amalgamation of repetitive and abstract verse had a soporific effect, and limited me to about ten pages per a sitting.
All told, Leaves of Grass is an unquestionable masterpiece and central to the American identity. I cannot express in a short review how much I appreciated this stunning rebellion against the literary and ideological temperaments of the time. The introduction by Malcolm Cowley added appreciated context to the work. In contrast, Mr. But the poetry! While I cannot say I was completely won over by Mr.
Similarly, the slight irritation I felt at being forced through pages of lists was entirely overshadowed by the imperative of the style. Five stars. The best thing I have read this year. Jan 13, Pierre rated it liked it Shelves: , poetry.
Whitman kept editing and adding to Leaves of Grass until he died. The subsequent editions are significantly larger and different than this initial slim edition. What would "American Literature" look like without Leaves of Grass? Hard to imagine. Impossible to answer. Its influence is as vast a "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
Its influence is as vast and far-reaching as the poetry barely contained within it. I liked some of the poems. I enjoyed, for example, in "Song of Myself," the description of grass as "the beautiful uncut hair of graves. There are numerous other lines that create beautiful, vivid images in my mind.
Too many to list, in fact. I'm not a fan of maximalist styles. I appreciate them, but I can't fully enjoy reading them. And Whitman's rapturous megalomania definitely provoked a few eye rolls and sighs. This self-aggrandizement seems, today, befitting of and on-brand for "America's Poet. Feb 24, Myles rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-poetry-man , favorites. You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms, 5 Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?
O culpable! O admirers! There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one ». Readers also enjoyed. About Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman. Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans After working as clerk, teacher, journalist and laborer, Whitman wrote his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a humanistic celebration of humanity, in Emerson , whom Whitman revered, said of Leaves of Grass that it held "incomparable things incomparably said.
His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at the Treasury Department in Washington, D. It is an irresistibly attractive, vari ous world of delicacy, strength, and joyous acceptance. It is also a world where the vision often darkens and moments of weakness, guilt, pain, and mortal fear must be confronted.
That in this exuberant yet anxious world of contrasts and tensions Americans—indeed, Americans of the globe—can recognize their own or perhaps see it for the first time is what gives the poem its rank in the literature of the United States and expla ins the continuing and sometimes anxious fascination it has held for its readers.
In the edition, the power of "Song of Myself" is at its least controlled or self-consciously "poetic," and the versatility and wit of its language are at their freshest and most exhilarating. The diction is also freer and the verse more supple in than later. In the first edition, the speaker "cocks [his] hat as [he] please[s]" instead of wearing it, as in later editions; he is "a rough" in the 1 edition and "of Manhattan the son" in the —92 edition section 24 ; his slang is more pungent "Washes and razors for foofoos" than in later versions, and when the occasion arises he will even curse—"O Christ!
My fit is mastering me! An important difference between "Song of Myself" and the eleven poems that follow it is that the latter are structurally closed and thus formally less innovative than the former with its essentially open, loose structure.
These eleven poems have often been referred to as "cuttings" from the long poem, passages that for one reason or another Whitman chose not to include in it yet would not discard altogether.
Some of the other poems, however, like "I Sing the Body Electric" or "There Was a Child Went Forth," are Whitman at his best, and the sequence as a whole is indispensable, for it concludes the business that "Song of M yself" has left unfinished.
The tenor of "Song of Myself" is robustly optimistic and self-confident, yet its protagonist is "somehow. He can extricate himself from each of these episodes but cannot shake them off completely. To discover and thereby confront and overcome the forces that stun him, he must probe the depths of his self: this process is the pr imary burden of the so-called "cuttings.
In this original version, however, it is at the very heart of Leaves of Grass , forming, with "Song of Myself," what Justin Kaplan calls the matrix of the work. After two other lists, in "I Sing the Body Electric" and "Faces," the procession comes to rest in the latter poem with the discovery o f the face of "the justified mother of men" section 5.
In the untitled cluster, the last six poems in the volume, a similar pattern, though much fainter, less pronounced, can be discerned. In another four years, in the magnificent conclusion of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," the two images will be fused. On the morrow of the publication of the first Leaves Whitman definitely did not wake to find himself famous.
Though no reliable records have survived, probably very few copies of the book were sold. Few reviews appeared, some of them discernin g and sympathetic, but most of them somewhat bewildered by the new work and also offended by the sexual frankness of some of its passages. A handful of unsigned reviews also appeared, which praised the volume in extravagant terms and in what must have ap peared rather extravagant prose.
These were written by the poet himself, who used his connections among the newspaper editors of New York to get them published. Apparently, they did not help sales much. Thus, nothing in the public response gave Whitman any encouragement to continue his "experiment. But Whitman had also had the good se nse to send out a few complimentary copies. Although the Quaker poet Whittier reportedly threw one of these into the fire, another copy reached Emerson. The praise from the author of "Self-R eliance" and "The Poet" was enough to outweigh the indifference or hostility of all other readers and to start Whitman on his plans for the edition.
With the publication of this new edition, the first one all but disappeared. When Malcolm Cowley reprinted it in paperback in , he had to introduce it as "the buried masterpiece of American writing" Cowley x. That the situation has radically changed is due, to a large extent, to Gay Wilson Allen, who, even before Cowley, gave the first editi on its due both in his handbook in and in his exemplary biography of Whitman, The Solitary Singer , in It has also been examined on its own in a book-length study and in a large number of critical articles, and two of its major poems, "Song of Myself" and "The Sleepers," are probably more often studied now in their first version than in their last.
Changes in critical perspectives and preoccupations are reflected, of course, in the responses to the first Leaves as well. Laura Ferrante added it Jul 18, Brandon is currently reading it Jul 19, Philip Bailey added it Sep 01, Laura Bailey added it Sep 02, Gabby is currently reading it Sep 08, Odell Lee is currently reading it Sep 17, Chesley Elkins marked it as to-read Aug 16, Victor Kogan is currently reading it Jul 25, Hochy Lora marked it as to-read Aug 05, Michael McGregor is currently reading it Aug 04, Carol is currently reading it Aug 04, Georgia is currently reading it Aug 05, Gary Prahl is currently reading it Aug 08, ZZcat marked it as to-read Aug 08, Rita Sanders marked it as to-read Aug 09, Subiaco Manor is currently reading it Aug 09, Pat Bell is currently reading it Aug 10, Donna is currently reading it Aug 11, Michael added it Aug 16, Joeleza is currently reading it Aug 17, Lana marked it as to-read Aug 18, Tera Comer marked it as to-read Oct 06, Cheryl marked it as to-read Oct 22, Mary Jones marked it as to-read Oct 28, Kevin is currently reading it Oct 11, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one ». About Walt Whitman.
0コメント