Leaves of Grass
Signed title page of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
1882
Originally published in 1855, Leaves of Grass was the seminal work of American poet, Walt Whitman. Though the humanist published several books, he would dedicate his professional life to editing and re-writing this controversial collection of poems. Known as the father of free verse, Whitman spurned traditional poetic devices, instead celebrating the material world, the individual and sensuality in his own unique style. The anthology proved enduringly popular with American readers and at least six different editions of the influential collection were published in Whitman’s lifetime. This signed title page belongs to a version from 1882.
Whitman’s most well-known poems concern Abraham Lincoln, a man who the poet greatly admired. Likewise, though the pair never met, presidential aides later recalled that Lincoln was entranced by Whitman’s work. Long before Lincoln rose to political prominence, the writer, disgusted by corrupt politicians, had dreamed of a heroic, rugged leader who would emerge from the real American West. Much like the President, Whitman was mistrustful of abolitionists and devoted to the idea of the Union. He believed the great sin of the South was not its dependence upon slavery, but secession and was, therefore, delighted when war was declared to preserve the Union. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” was his patriotic call to arms, encouraging students, bridegrooms and farmers to join the war effort and ignore the entreaties of weeping mothers.
Throughout the war, Whitman nursed injured soldiers in Washington D.C. and witnessed, first-hand, the brutal repercussions of the war. His collection, Drum-Taps, was published as the violence came to a close. Including powerful testaments to heroism and comradeship, alongside terrible tales of loss, it contains some of the most important poems to emerge from the period. Lincoln’s assassination would have an even more profound effect upon Whitman’s poetry. Scholars argue that Whitman saw Lincoln’s death as an event that, ultimately, reunited north and south. In his most well-known poem, Whitman imagines Lincoln as a captain who has steered his ship through a dreadful storm. As the ship returns to port amid celebrations, the commander dies and the narrator addresses his corpse: ‘O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;/The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won’. Similarly, in his elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, the poet recalls the ‘white skeletons of young men’ amid the debris of the battlefields and envisages the President as a ‘powerful, western, fallen star!’
Though Whitman himself came to resent the melodramatic and unusually traditional poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” was endlessly reprinted and performed. Parroted by school children and periodically revived in popular culture, Whitman’s poems – especially his eulogies to Abraham Lincoln – have remained popular. Leaves of Grass was one of the most influential American anthologies of the nineteenth century, not only introducing a unique literary style, but exploring radical ideas and memorialising the war’s fallen soldiers.
Throughout the war, Whitman nursed injured soldiers in Washington D.C. and witnessed, first-hand, the brutal repercussions of the war. His collection, Drum-Taps, was published as the violence came to a close. Including powerful testaments to heroism and comradeship, alongside terrible tales of loss, it contains some of the most important poems to emerge from the period. Lincoln’s assassination would have an even more profound effect upon Whitman’s poetry. Scholars argue that Whitman saw Lincoln’s death as an event that, ultimately, reunited north and south. In his most well-known poem, Whitman imagines Lincoln as a captain who has steered his ship through a dreadful storm. As the ship returns to port amid celebrations, the commander dies and the narrator addresses his corpse: ‘O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;/The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won’. Similarly, in his elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, the poet recalls the ‘white skeletons of young men’ amid the debris of the battlefields and envisages the President as a ‘powerful, western, fallen star!’
Though Whitman himself came to resent the melodramatic and unusually traditional poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” was endlessly reprinted and performed. Parroted by school children and periodically revived in popular culture, Whitman’s poems – especially his eulogies to Abraham Lincoln – have remained popular. Leaves of Grass was one of the most influential American anthologies of the nineteenth century, not only introducing a unique literary style, but exploring radical ideas and memorialising the war’s fallen soldiers.