Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman didn't just write poetry, he invented a new way for America to speak about itself. Leaves of Grass began as a slim, self-published volume in 1855 and grew across nearly four decades into a sweeping celebration of democracy, the human body, and the radical idea that every individual contains multitudes. Abandoning rhyme and meter, Whitman crafted a muscular, breath-like free verse that sounded like no poetry before it. The poems sing of everything: the flesh and the spirit, the city and the open road, sex and death and the stubborn persistence of joy. Here you'll find "Song of Myself," with its astonishing declaration "I contain multitudes," and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," perhaps the finest elegy in American literature. Whitman's vision was once scandalous, his frank celebrations of the body and sexuality provoked outrage, but it ultimately became the pulse of American poetry. This is the book that made it possible for poets to write honestly about being alive in a democratic world.