LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Devotees and scholars of gay writer Walt Whitman are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the original edition of his seminal work, “Leaves of Grass,” the concise volume of 12 poems that pushed the boundaries of social decency and of poetry itself.

By rejecting the rigid structures of British meter, Whitman offered readers free-spirited bursts of consciousness that forever changed American poetry. But it is the later voluminous version of the collection—running hundreds of pages—that is known to students across the U.S.

“The final ‘Leaves of Grass’ is an enormous book, with which Whitman did not do himself a favor, because a lot of the poetry is pure padding, purely hot air,” said biographer Justin Kaplan. “But if you go back to the original, it’s a wonderfully sparse little book, something like 96 pages of absolutely remarkable, stunning poetry.”

Across the U.S., celebrations of the anniversary have been as unpredictable as Whitman’s poetry, from lectures and readings to a performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic to guided meditations.

“It is the landmark in Western Hemisphere literature,” said literary critic Harold Bloom, a professor at Yale University, which is commemorating the anniversary with an exhibit including five copies of the rare 1855 text. “It is the first appearance of someone I judge to be the most important, the strongest, the most beautiful, the greatest writer in any of the languages used in the New World.”

Experts suspect only a few hundred copies of the original edition exist and are using the anniversary to try to count them.

Self-published, the original edition contains the now famous “carpenter portrait” of Whitman inside. While writers traditionally were shown in head-and-shoulders images suggesting that their art was a product of the mind, Whitman was shown in work clothes. Experts say it suggests “Leaves of Grass” was a product of the entire body.

“I celebrate myself,” Whitman began, the first three words of a poem that would become known as “Song of Myself.”

Almost immediately, controversy followed.

“People thought the sex scenes were far too frank and inappropriate for the civilized reading public,” said Ivan Marki, a Whitman scholar and a professor at Eckerd College in Florida. “People said it was not really poetry. They were used to the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”

Whitman’s discussion of sexuality drew criticism for years. In 1881, it was banned in Boston after the district attorney deemed it obscene.

“In his lifetime, it was condemned for its frank reflection of heterosexuality,” Kaplan said. “The people seemed not to realize that this is a very overtly homosexual work.”

His sentences proved to have resonance in American poetry. Ezra Pound addressed him by name in his 1916 poem, “A Pact.”

“It was you that broke the new wood,” Pound wrote. “Now is a time for carving.”

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem “Howl” is a long, winding verse reminiscent of “Song of Myself.” Ginsberg’s title, Marki said, referred to a line in Whitman’s poem in which he suggests mankind restrains its emotions in the name of manners: “What howls restrain’d by decorum.” Chicago Free Press