We can look at this one of two ways, either I'm a bit late to do a Christmas Book Haul video or I'm hella early for next year.(Click the link to see what other books arrived via the polar express).

"Song of Myself" is a work of pure genius comparable to Shakespeare's greatest. I love these last three stanzas especially. When my wife and I were dating long distance and when I was deployed, I would end alot of my letters with "I stop somewhere waiting for you."I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blo...

Whitman used to right fake reviews under false names for Leaves of Grass and send them to publishers, newspapers, and periodicals. I love that about him. So over the top. He had love for everything. Especially himself. As for the quality of the work the words speak for themselves:"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not co...

" I am the poet of the bodyAnd I am the poet of the soul. "I do not know how to review poetry or what to look for when I am reading it. All I can say is whether I liked it or not. I really, really liked this. Although it was written in 1855, the free verse felt fresh and actual. It was an ode to nature, love, sex and the self. I was recommended the 1855 version because it has some interesting punctuation and I thought it complemented the text well. " I celebrate myselfAnd what i assume you shall...

In Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman sings nature and his symbiosis with America, he sings the universe and his awareness of it all, but above all he sings the people and their quest for individuality and immortality. ‘The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.’ And here he includes himself with all his mysticism and spiritual illuminations. In that, it is a celebration of humanity, his country and everything in it. Some parts of his poems were so bea...

When Leaves of Grass was first published, critics applauded Whitman "only that he did not burn" the "mass of stupid filth" immediately upon completion. They primarily objected to its sensual and occasionally (rather overtly) homoerotic content. Nowadays, of course, it seems entirely too mild to raise an objection on those grounds, but man, oh man, I understand the impulse to want to turn this book into kindling. It's less like THIS... ...and more like THIS. This weighty poetic tome has all

Whitman sings the song of America like no other poet I know--the outsized joy and pain, the affinity for common folk and the love of nature and the sheer overwhelming feeling of every sight and sound and industrious noise around him. "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear," he wrote. Because of this some are tempted to see Whitman as a poet of pure exuberance--like a proto-hippie or, worse, like a garrulous Hallmark card. But Whitman doesn't shy away from pain at all--he embraces it l...

Leaves of Grass is like reading every single instant message that I and a friend of mine ever wrote to one another over the course of the last ten years. Likely way too long, too self-serving and would have shocked the general public if they cared to read it when it was written. But nestled in there are some real, true brilliant moments.This is after all Whitman's life work, laid bare and un-edited for the most part. What else are we to expect? He is literally singing a song of himself, which he...

Holy shit this is self-important and tedious.--update: This has sat untouched on my desk all year. I can think of a hundred books I'd rather start than finish this, so I doubt I'll pick it back up unless I run out of books to read, I'm too poor to buy any more books, all my friends turn on me and refuse to loan me anything else, and all the nearby libraries are set on fire simultaneously.

Did you know that the letters in "Leaves of Grass" can be rearranged to spell "Asses of Gravel"? If you find yourself anagramming the letters in the title rather than reading the poetry, it's a good sign you're not into the book. But I really wanted some of whatever Whitman was smoking that made him so ecstatically, ebulliently enthusiastic about every molecule on the planet. Including his own b.o. "The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer." Huh??? Was this guy sniffing glue along wi...

There's only so much rhetoric on American imperialism I can ingest and assimilate at a stretch. Later, Mr Whitman.(paused at 47%)

Atmospheric, ephemeral. Transcendental. It’s like going on a long walk during a misty rain – everything is being presented as new and fresh, but a little bit blurry and sometimes it is hard to see where you are or the way ahead. There’s not much that Whitman fails to elucidate in this epic prose-poem. I read it in stages, slowly, while reading another novel. I think it was best digested this way. Subject wise it is very dense, but because of the poetic style, Whitman has had to choose his words

Maybe one day I will get into poetry but today isn't that day.

Don't pay attention to me, I'm currently high on poetry.

Alright, my rating here is very misleading. I haven't read Leaves Of Grass. I don't even intend to read Leaves Of Grass. Not all the way through any way. It seems sort of weird to just read a big fat collection of poetry all the way through. The five star rating is for one poem, "Song of the Open Road".I've never really appreciated poetry. I've liked song lyrics and that's poetry, but it seemed like I needed a tune to go with it. I've liked scripture which can be pretty poetic, but it seemed I n...

SUCK MY DICK WALT

To read American poetryis to breathe America.With Whitman I inhale the kosmos. I expand.With Dickinson I exhale,become nobody. I contract.Visionaries both. They arethe Yang and Yin ofAmerican poetry.

The most impressive, of course, is "Song of Myself", after, the style of the poems becomes rather repetitive. And though it is said that "he uses repetition, which helps to develop a certain type of magical rhythm to accentuate the ideas stated in the poem", it becomes too much when it reoccurs in every single poem.The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’dsea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the win...

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself"I read a translation in Dutch of the original edition of 1855, with only 12 poems, and the first one occupies half of the book. This minimal approach (later versions were much, much more elaborate) has the effect of a trumpet call, it's pure vitalism, colored by a strong physical sensuality. It expresses deep faith in life and death, and a sense of belonging to all (a kind of transcendentalism), the organic and the anorganic, the whole universe. At the same t...

I read it in my living room. Read it by the sea. Read it in the afternoon, at sunset and at night. I read it from mid-winter through mid-spring. Read it while sad, read it while content, read it while not giving a fuck. I read it and understood it, read it and misinterpreted it. I read it.Do I seem weird?Do I care?