Leaves of grass

Leaves of Grass is a collection of poetry written over Walt Whitman's entire lifetime organized thematically into sections. Whitman revised and added to the book throughout his life, the final edition being published only months before his death in 1891. Whitman was intentional in not organizing the book in any chronological way. Instead, he was concerned with the journey of the poetry. He desired that the reader would see a self formed through the words and themes of the book. The opening section, "Inscriptions," gives the reader an overview of the work and the purview of its author. Whitman names the subject of the work - "One's-self." This is not only Whitman's self, though he certainly identifies himself as the hero of the epic, but it is also the reader's self as well as a more encompassing democratic self. The subject, then, is Whitman, the reader, and the nation. The themes of "Inscriptions" are as varied as the themes of the entire book. He writes poems of a political, social, personal, and sexual nature, all ideas that he will elaborate on in later sections. "Starting from Paumanok" is a kind of road map for the literary work ahead. Whitman understands the entire book as a journey and so he begins with his own beginnings of self-awareness and poetic inspiration as a boy on Long Island, New York. Whitman intends here to name those that will accompany him on his journey and he catalogs a vast list of people and places that will play a part in his travels. His poems are of these people and for these people. Whitman, however, is not just concerned with the physical but with the spiritual as well. His own soul is named as a character in the book and his poems, he says, are written with the soul in mind. "Song of Myself" is a celebration of the individual. It is one of the book's original poems, appearing in the first 1855 edition although it did not take its final form until the 1881 edition. Whitman does not call on religious methods or traditional institutions to help create his self. Instead, Whitman becomes the quintessential modern man, created through nature and created through his own journey of self discovery. In "Song of Myself," Whitman is creating his own poetic world and he is creating himself as a character within that world. He encompasses both the basest desires of the human flesh and the loftiest visions of the human soul. As he describes it, he becomes "multitudes." "Calamus," one of the most controversial sections of the book because of its vivid autoerotic and homosexual themes, moves from a celebration of the self to a celebration of what Whitman terms "manly love." Whitman is chiefly concerned with the love that men feel for each other. He means not just brotherly love, or familial love, but sexual love as well. In "Calamus," Whitman seeks to become joined with another man in as intimate a way as possible. The relationships that men feel for each other, he believes, is incomplete until all facets of friendship are explored. It is only through these facets of love that a person can come to understand the true nature of another person and the meaning of another being. This is the basis for the democratic relationship and the purest expression of it