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I like his stuff on nature.
Packed full of many more goodies than just Song of Myself. One of the only books I recommend reading the introduction. Quite the mind, especially given the times.Quotes:Do I contradict myself? Good, I contain multitudes.Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation / lads ahold of fire engines and hook and ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars.
...in progress
I know that he is one of the greats, but right now he is just not interesting to me. Im not in the right mindset for him.
poems - five starsDemocratic Vistas - 3.5 starsSpecimen Days - five stars for the Civil War medic bits, four stars for the rest
Selections from Leaves of Grass: 4 starsDemocratic Vistas: 1.5 starsSpecimen Days: 2.5 starsOverall rating of 2.75 stars
Picked this up the other day after seeing a homeless guy in Chinatown who was the spitting image of him. Also, Did you know that Bram Stoker's Dracula Character was based on Old Walt?
Changed my life. Spoke to me at a time when I felt completely alone.
luv it
I've never been a fan of the Transcendentalists, vastly preferring the English Romantics. Obviously the two aren’t mutually exclusive, but early on I found Emerson boring and Whitman weird. Surprisingly, though, this time around the force of so much of his poetry wore me down, and I actually enjoyed reading him. I still find his “look at how liberated and healthy I am to like the scent of armpits better than prayer” (which doesn’t have a scent but whatever) a bit off-putting. However, I find his...
I looked and looked for the most fulfilling edition of Walt Whitman, and I believe this is it. Whitman's a tough man to anthologize-- rather than publish multiple books, he just kept revising and republishing Leaves of Grass for his whole life. Figuring out which poems, and which versions to include must have been a tough task. This anthology is a success. A hearty selection from the full breadth of Whitman's work, this book truly fulfills the task set in its title. I probably shouldn't have to
For the person who Just stole my copy (I left it on my bike’s luggage carrier): Please read it! It will be one of the best and coolest experiences of your life!
Start from the understanding that I love the original "Leaves of Grass". There is an energy and originality and an unbridled joyousness that captivated me when I was in High School and which thrills me still. So the fact that this volume includes those great early poems would elicit praise from me by itself.But the revelation to me in this volume is "Specimen Days" - especially the entries from Whitman's time during the Civil War. His early training as a journalist and his genius as a poet are c...
My 10th grade American lit teacher said of Walt Whitman, "This is a guy who just couldn't wait to jump out of bed every morning." As a 16-year old, I was impressed already, but as I read his writing I became seriously fascinated with the life force that flows out through his poetry. I believe he will be ever young, ever-accessible to people as they are just realizing how much life has to offer those who open their eyes and hearts, those who drop everything and say "YES" to life. As a young man,
Read parts of Whitman's work over several months' time - too much to absorb all at once. This copy belongs to the library, hope I can find a copy of my own.
My relationship with "The Bard of Democracy" has been complicated, to say the least. You see, Walt Whitman is considered by many to be the epitome of the Transcendentalist movement, or of Romanticism, or of nationalism in general for the United States. To millions of people, he has had a major foothold in the literary canon, and, along with apple pie and Lady Liberty, he is considered one of those patriotic symbols contributing to the age-old sentiment known as "Americana". He is also said to ha...
I don't even know where Michael Warner (or anybody else) would start in arranging Walt Whitman's works into a "portable" collection to be consumed by a casual reader. The man wrote prolifically in all genres for half a century -- and his most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was rewritten so many times it's hard to know which publications to consider "authoritative." I'm not well-versed enough in Whitman to say whether or not the contents of this particular volume do the breadth of his career justi...
There's one poem, I think from "Autumn Rivulets," that I just discovered and absolutely adore: "O Living Always, Always Dying." I see it as a meditation on our ability/inability to move beyond past experiences, to reinvent ourselves daily, to acknowledge that the self from yesterday is not entirely the same self as today, and yet to embody it all, as we are all "living always, always dying".
A bit pompous, a tendency to dumb down, but in places (and that's enough), just marvellous.
Walt Whitman, and his contemporary Emily Dickinson, were the seminal poets of their era, and had influence on American poetry far beyond their lifetimes. Which, of course, means they get studied in English classes, and that’s where I first encountered this book, during my master’s degree studies.These classes naturally focus on bits and pieces of his multi-edition collection, Leaves of Grass, and especially his “Song of Myself,” but I wanted to read this entire book, not only to get the full mea...
