![]() ![]() Today's readers get a sense of the "ur-text" of Leaves of Grass, the first version of this historic volume, before Whitman made many revisions of both format and style. This Anniversary Edition captures the typeface, design and layout of the original edition supervised by Whitman himself. The 1855 edition broke new ground in its relaxed style, which prefigured free verse in its sexual candor in its images of racial bonding and democratic togetherness and in the intensity of its affirmation of the sanctity of the physical world. Everything about it-the unusual jacket and title page, the exuberant preface, the twelve free-flowing, untitled poems embracing every realm of experience-was new. ![]() Ralph Waldo Emerson judged the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." Nothing like the volume had ever appeared before. The publication of Leaves of Grass in July 1855 was a landmark event in literary history. So begins Leaves of Grass, the first great American poem and indeed, to this day, the greatest and most essentially American poem in all our national literature. I lean and loafe at my ease.observing a spear of summer grass."
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