Leaves of Grass
The definitive collection of Walt Whitman’s poetry.
$2.99
- Instant download, no account needed
- DRM-free EPUB for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books and Android
- Secure checkout with card, Apple Pay or Google Pay
- Length
- 131,000 words
- Reading time
- About 8 hours
- Format
- EPUB, DRM-free
About the book
Walt Whitman consciously set out to forge a personal path for himself as a poet. Inspired by contemporaries like Emerson who expressed a need for a new, uniquely American style of poetry, Whitman eschewed conventions he saw as outdated or undemocratic. Setting aside traditional rhyme, meter, and even brevity, Whitman favored a style that was declarative, direct, and maximalist. For subject matter he focused on the common individual, as democratic representative of all humanity, and the natural world of which humanity exists as an integral part. “Song of Myself” is perhaps the most well-known exemplar of this aesthetic.
Whitman’s poetic career took an abrupt turn during the American Civil War, and his poems from that time draw on his experiences volunteering at military hospitals. These, coupled with his elegy for President Lincoln after his assassination (“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”), helped to cement Whitman’s position as a particularly American voice.
This is the Standard Ebooks edition, carefully proofread and typeset, with a table of contents and linked footnotes.
