Leaves of grass poem by walt whitman6/19/2023 Most jarringly, for many readers, was its eschewal of traditional meter and rhythm in favor of free verse. Theġ855 edition broke with traditional poetry in numerous ways. Some of the key features of Whitman's poetry and his project within Leaves of Grass can be seen by focusing on one of his most famous (and longest) poems "Song of Myself", especially by considering it in the context of the first edition. While scholars debate the significance of the differencesĪmong the various editions and have varying opinions of the strengths and weaknesses of the versions of poems appearing in different editions, Leaves of Grass, through its multiple manifestations, maintains a coherent essence, an essenceĪt the center of Whitman's experimental, determinedly American poetics. It transformed as he aged and as he reflected on the new conditions of American life growing out of the Civil War and the age of increasing industrialization and urbanization that followed. Leaves of Grass, in a very real way, became Whitman's lifework. Twelve poems he initially included in the collection, adding numerous poems so that by the so-called deathbed edition of 1891-1892 the collection would include 293 poems. In these later editions, Whitman would expand and reframe the First published in 1855, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass would grow and change over the rest of his life through its later editions published in 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, and 1881.
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