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mezzosherri 's review for:
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
He's not wrong. Such a masterful mess of a thing--a new transcendental-realist mode of poetry that helped shape the Anglo-American literary tradition. Wildly inclusive and provincially imperialist all at the same time.
I get why some Goodreads members recommend focusing your choice on the original edition--Whitman's endless tinkering with this piece from 1855-1892 does make the final/official ("deathbed") edition something of a bloated and repetitive slog. And yet: to read the 1855 edition would keep you from seeing the ways that Whitman's experiences as a Civil War nurse immensely deepened the work, both in poems that explicitly reflected on the war, and thematically throughout.
He's not wrong. Such a masterful mess of a thing--a new transcendental-realist mode of poetry that helped shape the Anglo-American literary tradition. Wildly inclusive and provincially imperialist all at the same time.
I get why some Goodreads members recommend focusing your choice on the original edition--Whitman's endless tinkering with this piece from 1855-1892 does make the final/official ("deathbed") edition something of a bloated and repetitive slog. And yet: to read the 1855 edition would keep you from seeing the ways that Whitman's experiences as a Civil War nurse immensely deepened the work, both in poems that explicitly reflected on the war, and thematically throughout.