As energetic and diverse as the American life it describes, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass has been loved by generations for its celebration of a brash young nation and one man's exuberant spirit. First published at the author's expense in 1955, this collection of poems was revised and enlarged throughout Whitman's lifetime, and is presented here in the final or "Deathbed edition" of 1892.

Provides critical analysis of Whitman's works. The first section gives a representative sampling of the controversy that swirled about him during the period when Leaves of Grass was a new book.

Examines what makes "Leaves of Grass"--particularly the original edition--so distinctive and influential, including the use of the first person and the poet's views on sex, death, and other topics, and details its effect on other poets.

"'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.' So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which beloved poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of...