Whitman is, for all intents and purposes, the father of American poetry – and Leaves of Grass represents his life’s work. I would describe Whitman as a romantic naturalist. The outrage was such that the book was panned by critics, was the grounds for Whitman’s dismissal from his job (Whitman worked for the Department of the Interior, but was fired after Secretary of the Interior James Harlan read and was offended by the book), and the source of rumors around Whitman’s sexuality (historians are still arguing about his possible bisexual or homosexual tendencies).įirst line (from Song of Myself) : ”I celebrate myself, and sing myself / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
Even with a LOT of allegory, Whitman was writing not just about love, but about sex, and very clearly. “ With the single known exception of the Library Company of Philadelphia, libraries refused to buy the book, and the poem was legally banned in Boston in the 1880s and informally banned elsewhere“. Book #42 on Summer of Banned Books ’13. Challenge status: After Leaves of Grass was originally published, the Boston District Attorney and the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice worked to block publication of further copies/editions, and got retailers and bookshops to blackball the book.
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