Walt Whitman wrote expansive American poetry about the body, democracy, work, sexuality, nature, death and the attempt to contain many different lives within a single poetic voice. Leaves of Grass was the central project of his career and changed repeatedly across editions as he added, revised and reorganised poems. “Song of Myself” moves through people, landscapes, occupations and bodily experience in long free-verse lines, while “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” connects strangers across time through a shared urban journey. The poems later grouped around the Civil War include hospital experience, national grief and “O Captain! My Captain!”, his elegy for Abraham Lincoln. Whitman's style often uses catalogues, repetition and direct address rather than traditional rhyme schemes, giving the poetry a spoken, accumulative movement. His work belongs to American poetry, free verse and nineteenth-century literature. A good edition of Leaves of Grass with notes on the different versions is the best way to see both famous poems and the evolving project around them. Read more Less
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