The complete online text of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

Widely considered the most influential and innovative poet of America, Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, a village near Hempstead, Long Island, on 31 May 1819 to Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. His father had been born just after the end of the...

"A great figure, the greatest assuredly in our literature—yet perhaps only a great childsumming up and transmitting into poetry all the passionate aspirations of an America that had passed through the romantic revolution, the poet of selfhood and t...

"A great figure, the greatest assuredly in our literature--yet perhaps only a great child--summing up and transmitting into poetry all the passionate aspirations of an America that had passed through the romantic revolution, the poet of selfhood and the...

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Living during one of the most dynamic, divisive periods in American history, Walt Whitman captured the development of the nation and himself in his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass. The collection of poems, written over...

Leaves of Grass (1855) is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman. Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President...

Byline: Gaydell Collier My grandparents, Nana and Pappy, lived on the top floor of a six-story apartment building in Flushing, N.Y. For years when I was a child, I stayed with them two glorious weeks each summer. During the day, Nana...

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Wild for Whitman: The late poet Walt Whitman had a bit of a surge in popularity about a decade ago when his most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was revealed to be a standard-issue seduction tool of then commander-in-chief Bill Clinton. But ol’ Walt has...

The American Classics: A Personal Essay, by Denis Donoghue. Yale University Press, 295 pages, $27.Rapping the knuckles of the American classics is good fun-especially if it's done with a light, sharp touch. And nobody gets hurt, certainly not the great dead white males themselves, who...

In the following essay, McSweeney studies the relationship between physical health and imaginative power in Whitman's poetry, arguing that the differences in energy and tone between the poems of the 1855 and 1856 editions of Leaves of Grass and those poems added for the 1860 edition can at least in part be attributed to a shift in Whitman's emotional and physical health.

In the following essay, Warren maintains that, through works such as Leaves of Grass and in several essays, Whitman established a theory of language—one directly connected with literature and linguistic development and specifically focused on the significant role of literature in effecting linguistic change and diversity.

In the following essay, Breitwieser suggests that Whitman's usage of multiple voices in Leaves of Grass has political parallels. Breitwieser emphasizes the conflict in the poems between the voice of the small, individual "I" and that of the large, magnanimous, universal "I."

Walt Whitman's poems in "Leaves of Grass" transcend his times. His reflections on war are as relevant in our current wartime society as they were in his time of the U.S. Civil War.

Analyzes the Walt Whitman poems "The Soul, Reaching, Throwing Out for Love" and "Leaves of Grass." Describes the numerous editing done to each poem.

The ways Walt Whitman uses alliteration in his classic poem, "Leaves of Grass."