American poet Walt Whitman’s famous collection Leaves of Grass began as a selection of twelve poems first published in 1855 and endured various revisions and reorganizations over the following four decades. By the time the final “deathbed” edition was published in 1891—shortly before Whitman’s death in 1892—it had grown to include approximately four hundred poems (the precise number varies depending on the grouping of certain works), divided into fourteen sections. 

The first, “Inscriptions,” outlines Whitman’s ambitions for his work and its central themes: the self, the beauty and sacredness of the body, individuality, and the connections between people and things. Following this introductory section is “Song of Myself,” an extended poem comprising fifty-two sections and widely considered Whitman’s best-known work. The poem is a distillation of the poet’s view of himself as an individual, his commitment to inclusiveness and imaginative sympathy, and his connection to other people and the universe. 

The subsequent section, “Children of Adam,” celebrates physical love, procreation, and the human body, which Whitman claims is identical to and inseparable from the soul. This section contains one of Whitman’s most important long poems, “I Sing the Body Electric,” which encapsulates these themes. 

“Calamus” follows and is the longest—and perhaps most controversial—section of the book. The title refers to an aquatic plant of the same name; Whitman uses the plant’s phallic appearance to symbolize homosexual and masculine love, which he speaks of frankly and admiringly. The section extolls the virtues of “manly attachment” and “manly love,” emphasizing how essential it is to have male companions and to feel connected to others. In “Salut au Monde,” the first of a group of longer poems at the end of “Calamus,” the poet declares his love for everyone in all the countries in the world and for those who are not yet born. 

“Birds of Passage” is one of the shorter clusters of poems; in this section, Whitman lays out his vision for a future of universal love. He founds this vision of the future upon the antecedents of cultures stretching back through millennia, all of which, he claims, were perfect in their own way. He writes of universal principles rising above the squalid particularities that disfigure the earth. 

In the following section, “Sea-Drift,” Whitman uses the imagery of the sea and sea birds to express his ideas about the connections between everyone and everything throughout space and time. “By the Roadside” addresses a more disparate range of ideas, with short, aphoristic poems often crystalizing a single idea or a vivid image. In the section’s longer poems, Whitman satirizes injustice and points out the limiting consequences of vanity and conformity.

The next two sections, “Drum-Taps” and “Memories of President Lincoln,” draw on Whitman’s experiences as a soldier in the Civil War. “Drum-Taps” begins on a note of pride and elation, celebrating how New York led the Union army to war. Although the later poems celebrate the triumph of the Union army and the justice of its cause, they present these events in a more somber tone. Even more elegiac and personal in its expression of loss is “Memories of President Lincoln,” with its central image of personal tragedy amid public triumph encapsulated in the uncharacteristically formal diction, rhyme, and meter of “Oh Captain! My Captain!”

“Autumn Rivulets” was one of the last additions to Leaves of Grass and lacks a unifying theme. Whitman writes about a variety of disparate subjects and themes, including the aftermath of the Civil War, the growth of a child’s character, people who are excluded from society, the varieties of human experience, and the idea of universal acceptance....