Ron Peters's Reviews > Leaves of Grass: The Death-Bed Edition

I read the Modern Library’s Deathbed Edition of 1881-1882, the sixth edition since the poems first appeared in a shorter form a quarter-century before. I’m not a big poetry reader, so wading through 753 pages is an accomplishment for me!

Whitman certainly was a unique voice for everyday Americans of the 19th century. His themes of the equality of men and women, of the importance of workers, of democracy, of friendship, and of old age and death are all good. I hadn’t realized how much of the book was about the Civil War: his ode to Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” is moving. I enjoyed several poems such as “I Think I Could Turn and Live with Animals,” (Poem 32 of Part I, Song of Myself) of which this is a sample:

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Whitman is unusual for his time because of his overt and unabashed depictions of his sexuality, involving both men and women. Little random bits caught my eye:

“There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became
And that object became part of him for that day or a certain part of that day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.”

Still, the endless recitation of nouns in many of his poems wore decidedly thin for me after being repeated for the umpteenth time, e.g., Part 9 of Song of the Broad-Axe:

“Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce,”

Et cetera, ad nauseum. I don’t at all regret having read this book, but an anthologized selection of highlights would have sufficed.