Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman's life-long poetic project, first self-published in 1855 as a slim volume of twelve untitled poems and revised through nine editions until the 'deathbed' edition of 1891–92, by which point it had grown to over four hundred poems. The book inaugurates American free verse and a sprawling, catalogue-driven democratic mysticism — the self as cosmos, the body as sacred, the nation as a body in becoming. Song of Myself sits at the centre; later sections (Drum-Taps, Memories of President Lincoln) absorb the Civil War.

The 1855 edition opens with an untitled poem that would later become Song of Myself, announcing its programme in the first line: "I celebrate myself." The catalogue technique — long breath-driven lines accumulating names, trades, landscapes, and bodies — was without precedent in American verse. Whitman claimed Emerson as a precursor but exceeded him in range and ambition. The result is simultaneously a personal lyric, a national epic, and a mystical treatise on consciousness and the body.

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Song of Myself, §51

First lines

I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

Contents

Reception

Greeted on publication with a mix of revelation and revulsion — Emerson's private letter ("I greet you at the beginning of a great career") and Whitman's decision to print it on the second edition's spine without permission set the tone for a reception that has always mixed the prophetic and the scandalous. Banned in Boston in 1882 for the "Children of Adam" poems; defended by William Michael Rossetti and Anne Gilchrist in England. Twentieth-century criticism — from Randall Jarrell to Harold Bloom — placed Whitman alongside Dickinson as one of the two foundational American poets. Recent scholarship (Reynolds, Folsom) has examined his racial views and Civil War nursing with more rigour than the older hagiography permitted.

Frequently asked

What is Leaves of Grass?

Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman's life-long poetry collection, first self-published in 1855 as twelve untitled poems and expanded through nine editions until the "deathbed" edition of 1891–92. It inaugurated American free verse and introduces Whitman's democratic mysticism — the self as cosmos, the body as sacred, the nation as a body in becoming.

How many editions of Leaves of Grass did Whitman publish?

Whitman revised and expanded the collection across nine distinct editions between 1855 and 1891–92. The final "deathbed" edition, which Whitman considered the authoritative text, contains over four hundred poems — compared to twelve in the slim first edition.

What is "Song of Myself"?

"Song of Myself" is the centrepiece of Leaves of Grass, occupying roughly half the 1855 first edition. It opens with "I celebrate myself" and unfolds across 52 sections as a catalogue-driven meditation on self, body, nature, and democratic identity. Harold Bloom called it the greatest American poem.