Leaves of Grass : Simplicity In Poetry

Walt Whitman spent a lifetime revising Leaves of Grass, a body of poetry that abandoned rhyme and metre in favour of long, open lines. The poems take in the body, the natural world, work, democracy, death and the ordinary lives of ordinary people, treating all of it as fit subject for verse. Whitman's catalogues and repetitions give the writing its rhythm, and this edition presents the collection for readers approaching it for the first time as well as for close study. For the shelf: • Free verse that reshaped poetry in English • Recurring subjects of nature, selfhood and democracy • Long catalogue lines and direct address to the reader • A standard text on literature reading lists Suits poetry readers, literature students and anyone assembling a collection of nineteenth-century classics, available from Boipoka.