The Complete Poems

by Walt Whitman, Francis Murphy (Editor)

In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America’s most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,” edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.”
Features a completely new—and fuller—introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibility


Includes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notes

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, Fiction, American, 19th Century, The United States Of America

896 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1892

About the author

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

🌾 I review Walt elsewhere for Leaves of Grass. Someone who loved people but, as is often the case, was not embraced by those who live by a multitude of rules and dislike those who do not live by them too. Walt was a free spirit in the best sense of that phrase - he went to all kinds of good places in his heart and shared this in his poetry. It was the era of Lincoln and the Civil War and its aftermath.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walt Whitman is one of the great seers of modern poetry. He meditates on the shades and colours of the human soul often found in Hindu Bhakti writing. His work contains the infinite and the multiple in small strokes of sentences. Each poem is consciously incised to reveal something deep in very short spaces. Whitman sees the world literally like he is an ant on a blade of grass, and he just wants to observe it, between the tugs and tussles of the wind.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book much more on a reread than I did 30 years ago. I wonder who I was then that I didn't appreciate this book as it deserves! Anyway, I'm very glad that I've continued to read and reread it. Obviously, something continued to draw me to it. While I do think there are many flaws in some of his poems and some are definitely great than others, I his work as a whole as brilliant and powerfully impacting American literature. What is great is so very great. It's one of those books that lead me to read differently than I did before reading it. And that is something which is rare and for which I am grateful.

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Acknowledgements
Table of Dates
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Text

--'Leaves of Grass' Title Page

Inscriptions
--One's-Self I Sing
--As I Ponder'd in Silence
--In Cabin'd Ships at Sea
--To Foreign Lands
--To a Historian
--To Thee Old Cause
--Eidólons
--For Him I Sing
--When I Read the Book
--Beginning My Studies
--Beginners
--To the States
--On Journeys through the States
--To a Certain Cantatrice
--Me Imperturbe
--Savantism
--The Ship Starting
--I Hear America Singing
--What Place is Besieged?
--Still through the One I Sing
--Shut not Your Doors
--Poets to Come
--To You
--Thou Reader

--Starting from Paumanok
--Song of Myself

Children of Adam
--To the Garden of the World
--From Pent-up Aching Rivers
--I Sing the Body Electric
--A Woman Waits for Me
--Spontaneous Me
--One Hour to Madness and Joy
--Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
--Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
--We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd
--O Hymen! O Hymenee!
--I Am He that Aches with Love
--Native Moments
--Once I Pass'd through a Populous City
--I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
--Facing West from California's Shores
--As Adam Early in the Morning

Calamus
--In Paths Untrodden
--Scented Herbage of My Breast
--Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand
--For You O Democracy
--These I Singing in Spring
--Not Heaving from my Ribb'd Breast Only
--Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
--The Base of All Metaphysics
--Recorders Ages Hence
--When I Heard at the Close of the Day
--Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?
--Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
--Not Heat Flames up and Consumes
--Trickle Drops
--City of Orgies
--Behold This Swarthy Face
--I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
--To a Stranger
--This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
--I Hear It was Charged against Me
--The Prairie-grass Dividing
--When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame
--We Two Boys together Clinging
--A Promise to California
--Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
--No Labor-Saving Machine
--A Glimpse
--A Leaf for Hand in Hand
--Earth, My Likeness
--I Dream'd in a Dream
--What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
--To the East and to the West
--Sometimes with One I Love
--To a Western Boy
--Fast-Anchor'd Eternal O Love!
--Among the Multitude
--O You whom I Often and Silently Come
--That Shadow My Likeness
--Full of Life Now

--Salut au Monde!
--Song of the Open Road
--Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
--Song of the Answerer
--Our Old Feuillage
--A Song of Joys
--Song of the Broad-Axe
--Song of the Exposition
--Song of the Redwood-Tree
--A Song for Occupations
--A Song of the Rolling Earth
--Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

Birds Of Passage
--Song of the Universal
--Pioneers! O Pioneers!
--To You
--France, The 18th Year of These States
--Myself and Mine
--Year of Meteors (1859-60)
--With Antecedents

--A Broadway Pageant

Sea-Drift
--Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
--As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life
--Tears
--To the Man-of-War Bird
--Aboard at a Ship's Helm
--On the Beach at Night
--The World Below the Brine
--On the Beach at Night Alone
--Song for All Seas, All Ships
--Patroling Barnegat
--After the Sea-Ship

By The Roadside
--A Boston Ballad (1854)
--Europe, The 72d and 73d Years of These States
--A Hand-Mirror
--Gods
--Germs
--Thoughts
--When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
--Perfections
--O Me! O Life!
--To a President
--I Sit and Look Out
--To Rich Givers
--The Dalliance of the Eagles
--Roaming in Thought
--A Farm Picture
--A Child's Amaze
--The Runner
--Beautiful Women
--Mother and Babe
--Thought
--Visor'd
--Thought
--Gliding o'er All
--Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
--Thought
--To Old Age
--Locations and Times
--Offerings
--To the States, To Identify the 16th, 17th or 18th Presidentiad

Drum-Taps
--First O Songs for a Prelude
--Eighteen Sixty-One
--Beat! Beat! Drums!
--From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
--Song of the Banner at Daybreak
--Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
--Virginia -- the West
--City of Ships
--The Centenarian's Story
--Cavalry Crossing a Ford
--Bivouac on a Mountain Side
--An Army Corps on the March
--By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame
--Come up from the Fields Father
--Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
--A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
--A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
--As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods
--Not the Pilot
--Year that Trembled and Reel'd beneath Me
--The Wound-Dresser
--Long, too Long America
--Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
--Dirge for Two Veterans
--Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
--I Saw Old General at Bay
--The Artilleryman's Vision
--Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
--Not Youth Pertains to Me
--Race of Veterans
--World Take Good Notice
--O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
--Look Down Fair Moon
--Reconciliation
--How Solemn as One by One
--As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
--Delicate Cluster
--To a Certain Civilian
--Lo, Victress on the Peaks
--Spirit Whose Work is Done
--Adieu to a Soldier
--Turn O Libertad
--To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod

Memories Of President Lincoln
--When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
--O Captain! My Captain!
--Hush'd Be the Camps To-day
--This Dust Was Once the Man

--By Blue Ontario's Shore
--Reversals

Autumn Rivulets
--As Consequent, Etc.
--The Return of the Heroes
--There Was a Child Went Forth
--Old Ireland
--The City Dead-House
--This Compost
--To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire
--Unnamed Lands
--Song of Prudence
--The Singer in the Prison
--Warble for Lilac-Time
--Outlines for a Tomb
--Out from Behind This Mask
--Vocalism
--To Him That was Crucified
--You Felons on Trial in Courts
--Laws for Creations
--To a Common Prostitute
--I Was Looking a Long While
--Thought
--Miracles
--Sparkles from the Wheel
--To a Pupil
--Unfolded Out of the Folds
--What am I After All
--Kosmos
--Others May Praise What They Like
--Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
--Tests
--The Torch
--O Star of France (1870-71)
--The Ox-Tamer
--An Old Man's Thought of School
--Wandering at Morn
--Italian Music in Dakota
--With All Thy Gifts

--My Picture-Gallery
--The Prairie States

--Proud Music of the Storm
--Passage to India
--Prayer of Columbus
--The Sleepers
--Transpositions
--To Think of Time

Whispers Of Heavenly Death
--Darest Thou Now O Soul
--Whispers of Heavenly Death
--Chanting the Square Deific
--Of Him I Love Day and Night
--Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
--As if a Phantom Caress'd Me
--Assurances
--Quicksand Years
--That Music Always Round Me
--What Ship Puzzled at Sea
--A Noiseless Patient Spider
--O Living Always, Always Dying
--To One Shortly to Die
--Night on the Prairies
--Thought
--The Last Invocation
--As I Watch'd the Ploughman Ploughing
--Pensive and Faltering

--Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
--A Paumanok Picture

From Noon To Starry Night
--Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling
--Faces
--The Mystic Trumpeter
--To a Locomotive in Winter
--O Magnet-South
--Mannahatta
--All is Truth
--A Riddle Song
--Excelsior
--Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
--Thoughts
--Mediums
--Weave in, My Hardy Life
--Spain, 1873-74
--By Broad Potomac's Shore
--From Far Dakota's Cañons (June 25, 1876)
--Old War-Dreams
--Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
--What Best I See in Thee
--Spirit That Form'd This Scene
--As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
--A Clear Midnight

Songs Of Parting
--As the Time Draws Nigh
--Years of the Modern
--Ashes of Soldiers
--Thoughts
--Song at Sunset
--As at Thy Portals Also Death
--My Legacy
--Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
--Camps of Green
--The Sobbing of the Bells
--As They Draw to a Close
--Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
--The Untold Want
--Portals
--These Carols
--Now Finalè to the Shore
--So Long!

First Annex: Sands At Seventy
--Mannahatta
--Paumanok
--From Montauk Point
--To Those Who've Fail'd
--A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
--The Bravest Soldiers
--A Font of Type
--As I Sit Writing Here
--My Canary Bird
--Queries to My Seventieth Year
--The Wallabout Martyrs
--The First Dandelion
--America
--Memories
--To-day and Thee
--After the Dazzle of Day
--Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
--Out of May's Shows Selected
--Halcyon Days

Fancies at Navesink
--The Pilot in the Mist
--Had I the Choice
--You Tides with Ceaseless Swell
--Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning
--And Yet Not You Alone
--Proudly the Flood Comes In
--By That Long Scan of Waves
--Then Last of All

--Election Day, November, 1884
--With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
--Death of General Grant
--Red Jacket (from Aloft)
--Washington's Monument, February, 1885
--Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
--Broadway
--To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
--Old Salt Kossabone
--The Dead Tenor
--Continuities
--Yonnondío
--Life
--'Going Somewhere'
--Small the Theme of My Chant
--True Conquerors
--The United States to Old World Critics
--The Calming Thought of All
--Thanks in Old Age
--Life and Death
--The Voice of the Rain
--Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here
--While Not the Past Forgetting
--The Dying Veteran
--Stronger Lessons
--A Prairie Sunset
--Twenty Years
--Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
--Twilight
--You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
--Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
--The Dead Emperor
--As the Greek's Signal Flame
--The Dismantled Ship
--Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
--An Evening Lull
--Old Age's Lambent Peaks
--After the Supper and Talk

Second Annex: Good-Bye My Fancy
--Preface Note to Second Annex
--Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht!
--Lingering Last Drops
--Good-Bye My Fancy
--On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
--My 71st Year
--Apparitions
--The Pallid Wreath
--An Ended Day
--Old Age's Ship and Crafty Death's
--To the Pending Year
--Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher
--Long, Long Hence
--Bravo, Paris Exposition!
--Interpolation Sounds
--To the Sun-set Breeze
--Old Chants
--A Christmas Greeting
--Sounds of the Winter
--A Twilight Song
--When the Full-Grown Poet Came
--Osceola
--A Voice from Death
--A Persian Lesson
--The Commonplace
--'The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete'
--Mirages
--L. of G.'s Purport
--The Unexpress'd
--Grand is the Seen
--Unseen Buds
--Good-Bye My Fancy!

--A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads

Appendix 1

Old Age Echoes
--An Executor's Diary Note, 1891
--To Soar in Freedom and in Fullness of Power
--Then Shall Perceive
--The Few Drops Known
--One Thought Ever at the Fore
--While Behind All, Firm and Erect
--A Kiss to the Bride
--Nay, Tell Me Not To-day the Publish'd Shame
--Supplement Hours
--Of Many a Smutch'd Deed Reminiscent
--To Be at All
--Death's Valley
--On the Same Picture
--A Thought of Columbus

Appendix 2

Poems Excluded from Leaves of Grass
--Great Are the Myths
--Poem of Remembrances for a Girl or a Boy of These States
--Think of the Soul
--Respondez!
--[In the New Garden]
--[Who is Now Reading This?]
--[I Thought That Knowledge Alone Would Suffice]
--[Hours Continuing Long]
--[So Far, and So Far, and On Toward the End]
--Thoughts -- 6: 'Of What I Write'
--Says
--Apostroph
--O Sun of Real Peace
--To You
--Now Lift Me Close
--To the Reader at Parting
--Debris
--[States!]
--Bathed in War's Perfume
--Solid, Ironical, Rolling Orb
--Not My Enemies Ever Invade Me
--This Day, O Soul
--Ashes of Soldiers: Epigraph
--One Song, America, Before I Go
--Souvenirs of Democracy
--From My Last Years
--In Former Songs
--The Beauty of the Ship
--After an Interval
--Two Rivulets
--Or, from That Sea of Time
--As in a Swoon
--Lessons
--[Last Droplets]
--Ship Ahoy!
--For Queen Victoria's Birthday
--L of G
--After the Argument
--For Us Two, Reader Dear

Appendix 3

Early Poems
--Our Future Lot
--Young Grimes
--Fame's Vanity
--My Departure
--The Death of the Nature-Lover
--The Inca's Daughter
--The Love That Is Hereafter
--We All Shall Rest at Last
--The Spanish Lady
--The End of All
--The Columbian's Song
--The Punishment of Pride
--Ambition
--The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke
--Time to Come
--The Play-Ground
--Ode
--New Year's Day, 1848
--The House of Friends
--Resurgemus
--The Mississippi at Midnight
--Song for Certain Congressmen
--Blood-Money
--Pictures

Appendix 4

--Song of Myself: The Text from the First Edition of Leaves of Grass (1855)

Appendix 5

--Prefaces

--Leaves of Grass, 1855
--Leaves of Grass, 1856
--As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, 1872
--Preface, 1876

Appendix 6

--A Sketch

Notes
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

[Leah Rachel von Essen]

Recently, someone I love passed away. He was an English teacher, fought for green space in Long Island, and was instrumental to protecting Walt Whitman's birthplace. When he passed, I picked up this volume at the airport bookstore. And I started Leaves of Grass at the beginning.

This isn't a proper review in any which way, because I didn't read this book as I usually would. Reading a book beloved by someone else is an intimate form of getting to know them, or in this case, of mourning them. Reading these poems about self-assurance, about courage. About the visceral pleasures of nature. About the entire world and its wonders captured in one bloom of lilac. Whitman lists places, visions, moments, specifics cast as universals. I could see my uncle hiking through these pages, see his wide smile as he pointed out a bald eagle far above us. Thought about his joy when we got him a hat when we were kids for Christmas, and we proudly said that he hikes outside a lot, and this would keep his head warm. In Whitman's verses, I could see him painting, woodworking, drinking, enjoying this world as Whitman says we should. I spent time with Whitman, and it was the right memorial.

[Kjdick · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mockingbirds throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight ......

Simple, visceral words phrased in long steady breaths -- a human meter. i could read this collection over and over. actually i do and so do my students and always there is one in the class who loves it as much as i do -- maybe more.

uncle walt -- omisexual super poet of the body, soul, and mind.

[Zanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whitman starts off in a grandiose and expansive style and never shifts from it, staying in the highest possible register at all times. While his poems are individually titled they form a single mass of life-affirmation and Whitman's own style of patriotism and religious devotion.

Most interesting to me is Whitman's highly ambiguous attitude to gender and sexuality. He calls for equality, and reveals an odd mixture of traditional and progressive views. His motifs sometimes recall Spartan ideals. Homosexual notes are sounded with an unwilling sincerity.

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

" . . . read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life . . . dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

I could have done without Whitman's overzealous patriotism, but the genius of his work is beautiful and utterly undeniable.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Pete! You gave me several books for my 50th and this is one of them. Two years and two days later I finish it. That’s ok, it’s not a book. It’s to be read, word for word, as opportune allows.
I have always been a fan of rhythm and rhyme; I love the bush poetry of Patterson. This is the first time I really read any free verse. Free from the constraints of cadence and rhyme and I found it almost invigorating. I guess the greatest compliment I can give it is a poem I wrote, for one of my sister’s birthdays, which is heavily inspired by Whitman.

A Tree, a Leaf, a Brooch and Us

I saw in a paddock, a tall gum growing
Alone it stood-
tired, gnarled and old.
Its companions a symbiotic flow
Of ants, spiders, bugs and the occasional kangaroo or galah that take refuge in the measly shade offered by the thin sun beaten leaves.
I wondered of its life.
And in turn, my own.
For I could not bear to be friendless, alone, without my kind to rustle and chatter amongst.
I thought how the tree’s life, its existence, its very seed, is the antithesis of what I adore.
Its pastured imprisonment leaves it bereft of friends, of erudite branches to nourish its roots and soul.
In tokenistic fervour, I bought a brooch- leaf emblazoned
to remind us of that solitary tree
and know that we,
have Family,
Friends
and
Love.

[Taka · Rating 3 out of 5]

An American Ubermensch--

Nietzsche would have loved Whitman's expansive, all-encompassing poetry that celebrates the human body, soul, and the world; Whitman's poems all say "yes" to life, an ideal Nietzsche found to be the philosophy of the future in contrast to the "nay-saying" philosophies and religions (most prominently, Christianity).

Whitman sings of democratic America, of the common people, of sexuality, and of unconditional love of everything about life. He finds voice, poetry, specifically for the new world power that was emerging in his lifetime, and it is full of energy, openness, and simplicity.

Not being in the habit of reading poetry, I've had some difficulties understanding some of them, but I enjoyed the overall experience, of having a glimpse into the poetic soul of the U.S. circa the late 19th century.

Good stuff.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can never sing Whitmans praises enough, the man was a genius before his time - he knew, profoundly, that we are all one and are all connected and that all is just experience...

"Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn."

Mystic, poetic soul, lover of everything, God.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read some Whitman and I liked it. I have by no means read enough to give it any honest judgment, but I would like to read more, which I can only say for a few of the poets I've read, which likely reflects on my poor appreciation for poetry as a medium but my enjoyment of topics that resonate with my interests. what can I say, I'm selfish.

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can you say about Walt Whitman. He was a genius. His writing is beautiful and human. He undertands mankind. Not all of his poems are masterpieces; that is the down side of buying complete works, but with some writers you don't want to miss a word. He is one of those.

[Shannan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got sidetracked with this while I was trying to finish Mistborn 3. Whitman has been on the brain lately so I pulled out my book and have been reading it off and on for a month. I can't say I have read every page, but I have read most of it over the course of years. Oh me! Oh life!

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's nothing to like about Whitman's poetry.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whitman’s vision of mystic unity informs a generous sympathy expressed in long lines, chants, and lists. The flip side is a lack of analytic discrimination.

[c_branwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ja Whitmana po prostu kocham. Jeden z najważniejszych dla mnie poetów.

[Nithin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.4)

[Luke Hannigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much just leaves of grass. Lovely, lovely poetry. Beautiful.

[Bojidar Alexandrov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whitman’s poetry is supposed to be an ecstatic celebration of nature, democracy, diversity, human ingeniousness, and life itslef. It is supposed to be elevating, optimistic, and renewing the reader’s appreciation of the universe. Yet, I found this exhaustive collection of his works one of the most ennui-inducing books I have ever encountered (not an exageration). I could feel that his enthusiasm was genuine but unfortunately to me it was anything but contagious.

The style, praised as “free-flowing”, felt repetitive, unpoetic, unreadable, and downright annoying. Whitman’s compulsive desire to “sing” everything, to embrace all areas of human activity, to leave nothing out, results in a lot of his poems being comprised of irksome lists of all sorts of things (on several occasions he spends pages expressing his respect and admiration for every nation on Earth, one by one, or for every American state, or every human occupation...)

Some of his passages are simply impenetrable but, similarly to many “mystics” and “spiritualists”, Whitman seems to revel in his own ambiguity. (a continuing theme is his refusal to “translate himself”) His pantheistic vision, oscillating between rejection of metaphysics and reflections on the divine, between praise of the purely physical and discussions of immortality, is not necessarily inconsistent - it fits perfectly into a school of thought, peculiar to America and well established in his time. The problem, to me at least, is not so much with the content as it is with the cumbersome delivery.

All that said, I have to admit that there is a specific mood thats can bring the best out of his poems. Occasionally- perhaps on a Sunday morning, perhaps after a strong coffee - when you are feeling sentimental and are prone to marvel at the miracle of life, you might overlook the bothersome writing and enjoy the exaltation of these songs.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Preacher of America.

Whitman's works are like a viewfinder, even a time machine, to places and events that can not be experienced in the same way elsewhere.

Some times I feel he is a bit repetitive, but hammering home the imagery helps paint an even stronger picture of what he is seeing and feeling.

I'm really glad I was able to read this and note down some of the poems that stood out most to me. A great value for the price as well.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style and the direction of genius to similar points be satisfactory now? [...] Is he beloved long and long after he is buried?"

I've been with Whitman over a month now and I'm still thrumming, so this isn't hyper coherent but. But.

I came to this not only as a modern audience but as a definite outsider and as someone who has a... let's say complicated relationship to the US and its position in the world and all it represents, so it wasn't easy, often, to keep pace with someone whose love and belief for the country is so fundamental to his project. That said, however. That I could be touched so deeply, and that I'm still reciting lines to myself, and that I read all of Song of Myself twice in one month... Speaks for itself, i guess.

[ZaRi]

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been in the process of reading, The Complete Poems, by Walt Whitman and I have not regretted a single page. His book contains every poem he has written and is great for someone who is looking to learn more about Walt Whitman. My book is marked with lots of annotations from reading and his wisdom is beyond my years. He is hands down one of my favorite poets. I highly recommend this book.

[Nia Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

La poesía de Walt Witman tiene el poder de mirar dentro de nosotros mismos y encontrar belleza por donde quiera que uno mire. Su escritura suelta, honesta, imprecisa, y orgánica, captura el alma de las letras. Éste es uno de mis libros favoritos, es una edición muy fácil de cargar, liviana, manipulable y lo mejor de todo es que está en su idioma original.

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

(My edition was published by Wordsworth Poetic Library)

Whitman's elegant works were extraordinarily progressive and underscored by passion and spirituality. He saw the beauty and the wonder in even the smallest of details and philosophised on what it means to be oneself.

Truly, an essential poet. Reading his works is like looking at the world with a fresh pair of eyes.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

How I adore these anthems to the emerging American spirit, the panoramic observations of the sentient being celebrating himself, the body, the miracle of creation, and the Oneness of all that is—singing above the din of everyday life even amidst the hellacious barbarity and nihilistic insanity of the Civil War years. Leaves of Grass (1855) is a must-read for all aspiring poets.

[Soodaroo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The forefather of poems in new shapes is aware of the meaning of Humanity, lets join him . . .

[Foxygiraffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uncle Walt! You are my god.

[Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

poems about nature, sex, life, death... pretty rad.