Maggie's Farm

Leaves of Grass

150th Anniversary of Leaves of Grass. A good time for a Whitman-fest at the Virginia Quarterly Review. They are a subscription site, but many of the articles are free online.

From the intro by Ted Gennoway:

There's a manuscript in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia that I consider the most important single sheet of paper in American literary history. It doesn't look like anything so grandiose. In fact, it looks like little more than a scrap of paper with a few scrawled lines. There are words scratched out here and there in the penciled script, alternate words tried out, question marks inserted over uncertain choices, but the words could hardly be more significant:

The spotted hawk salutes the approaching night;
He swoops by me, and rebukes me hoarsely with his invitation;
He complains with sarcastic voice of my lagging
I feel apt to clip it and go;
I am not half tamed, yet.—

VQR's Whitman issue here. Their interesting gallery of Whitman photos here.