Tim's review of Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition by Walt Whitman
4 1/2 stars, really, but we can't do that. This is the original 1855 version. Whitman added to the collection throughout his life, ending up with an overstuffed and very uneven "deathbed" version, which is better known. There are some good poems in it which aren’t in the original, such as When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d, but there’s a lot of pretty weak stuff, too. The 1855 has a small number of pretty consistently excellent poems which are highly original and loosely but definitely connected. Reading it is a very different experience from wading through the bloated, inconsistent final version – there’s something Whitmanesque (i.e., at it’s best) about the original collection as a unit. I also recall Malcolm Cowley’s introduction being a bit wild and wooly (written in the late 60s or early 70s), but being interesting and enlightening.
comments
No comments have been added yet.
