Leaves of Grass

His poetry has a huge elemental quality, akin to that of winds and clouds and seas.

To speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, this was the standard he had set himself, and in pursuance of this ideal, he had given his first and most typically unconventional volume the title, Leaves of Grass.

No name could better convey and sum up his meaning in art, the commixture of the minute and the universal, the simple and the inexplicable, the particular and the all-pervading, the commonplace which is also the miracle.

For to Whitman, leaves of grass were this and more.

To me, he declared, as I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, the grass blades no less so than the gentle soft-born measureless light, and avowedly, from these external expressions of nature, he derived all power of song.

You know? And so I read the first line, "Green was the color of the grass," and I'm thinking, "Ooh, the grass.

Is this Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass?" You know, wonderful, um, you know, philosophical, religious idealism in Walt Whitman.

He is one of the mentors of my life.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I love Brother Walt.

He is amazing.

Um, so if you've never read his works- Get a great big fat copy of Leaves of Grass and just dive in.

[laughs]

Didn't he write about how Monica Lewinsky should go to...

Did he write the book Leaves of Grass? Yes.

No, Walt Whitman wrote it.

No, that was Walt

Robin left the room with the preoccupied air of a man of fifty.

The difficulty of choosing between Geoffrey's story of my heart and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, if there wasn't a room in the box for both, was terrible.

Of course, Randall was coming himself in a few days, and it would have been simpler to let him choose for himself.

But he had particularly asked for them to be sent by the fourth, and today was the third.

A photograph of his first wife hung over the mantelpiece, a small sketch of Auckland Harbour, a rough drawing of the terraces before their destruction, these were all his pictures.

He had been trying to read since his return, and copies of The Egoist and some of Swinburne's poetry lay on the table, but the first had seemed incomprehensible to him, and the second indecent, and he had abandoned them.

But he had made one discovery, thanks to Bethel, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

It seemed to him the greatest book that he had ever read, the very voicing of all his hopes and ideals and faith.

Lincoln was a natural critic.

When Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was first published, a copy of the book was read and discussed by several of his friends in Springfield.

Lincoln at once recognized the fact that a new poetic genius had appeared, and he did not permit adverse opinions to influence his judgment.

He cared nothing for the Romantic in itself.

Appendix to Whitman as prophet, 94.

The poetic form of Leaves of Grass, 103.

Walt Whitman's children, 137.

Whitman and Emerson, 153.

Mrs. Gilchrist, widow of Alexander Gilchrist, the biographer of Blake, was a capable and large-minded woman.

A year earlier she, with two daughters and a son, had come from England for a two or three years visit to the States and had settled in Philadelphia.

As is well known, she was the first of English women to fully and publicly recognize, as she did in some printed letters, the splendid genius of the poet, and that at a time, 1868 or 69, when Leaves of Grass to most of the literary world was little better than the incoherent ramblings of a maniac.

More than once did she relate to me how, on first opening the volume, when her eye fell upon the fine, nearly full-length engraving taken from a daguerreotype of the author, she exclaimed, quote, Here at last is the face of Christ which the painters have so long sought for, end quote.

Lincoln was a natural critic.

When Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was first published, a copy of the book was read and discussed by several of his friends in Springfield.

Lincoln at once recognized the fact that a new poetic genius had appeared, and he did not permit adverse opinions to influence his judgment.

He cared nothing for the Romantic in itself.

Yeah.

Um, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is kind of, would probably occupy that space for me.

Um, I just love Whitman and, uh, that poem is just.

As he said, it contains everything.