Walt Whitman

The poetry of Walt Whitman is the cornerstone of modern American verse. He was America's first truly great poet and his influence is still evident today. The first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, was a revolutionary manifesto declaring America's independence from European cultural domination. His rhapsodic free verse broke radically with poetic, tradition: it was poetry about America, its democracy, its people, and its hopes....

"Leaves of Grass," first published in 1855, contained twelve long untitled poems, but Whitman continued to expand it throughout his life. Whitman's poetry was unprecedented in its unapologetic joy in the physical and its inextricable link to the spiritual. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to him: "I am very happy in reading ["Leaves of Grass"], as great power makes us happy ... I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be."--Syndetics....

Whitman originally published this work in 1858 as a thirteen-part essay series in the New York Atlas. He used the pen name "Mose Velsor." This health manifesto, relevant today, features recommendations for eating, sleeping and exercise, emphasizing mderation and focusing on the holistic relationship between the mind and the body.

"Here is Whitman the sage, champion of expansiveness and human freedom. Here too, is the poet's more personal side--his vivid memories of Thoreau, Emerson, and Lincoln, his literary judgments of writers such as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy, and his expressions of hope in the democratic promise of the nation he loved. The result is a keepsake edition to touch the soul, capturing the distilled wisdom of America's greatest poet"--from Jacket.