Leaves of Grass
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First published in 1855, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass announced a radically new voice in American poetry: expansive, democratic, sensuous and unafraid to embrace the ordinary alongside the sublime. Its first edition contained just twelve untitled poems, including the beginnings of what would become “Song of Myself”, in which a wandering, self-questioning speaker celebrates the body, the soul and the shared substance of human experience. Rejecting conventional poetic forms in favour of long, sweeping lines and a rhythm shaped by speech, Whitman creates a poetry as restless and open as the young nation he sought to describe. Workers, lovers, strangers, landscapes and city streets all enter his vision, each granted a place in an immense and evolving portrait of life.
Whitman revised and enlarged Leaves of Grass throughout his life, transforming it from a slim, self-published volume into the defining work of his poetic career. Its celebration of individuality, sensuality, nature and human solidarity challenged the moral and literary conventions of nineteenth-century America, provoking both outrage and admiration. Beneath its exuberant confidence lies a profound tenderness towards the overlooked and the marginalised, alongside an enduring search for connection between the self and the wider world. A landmark of American literature, the collection helped shape the possibilities of modern poetry and remains a living invitation to see the ordinary world anew.
From the book
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.”
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
On Leaves of Grass
“I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, letter to Walt Whitman, 1855