Book Review: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

From now on, once a week (more or less, depending on my mood or opportunity) I'm going to post a book review of whatever book I'm currently reading from my collection.

This week's review is on Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman, the sometimes-called quintessential American Poet.

I bought this book because it was on sale in the bargain section at B&N about a year ago. I picked it up again recently to give it another try. Also, I felt that I was required to own a copy and read at least part of it, as it is, apparently, such a big part of literary history.

If you just want a thumbs up or thumbs down without having to read the whole review (I'm well aware that I tend to ramble) then here it is: Don't bother even picking this up.

Or perhaps you should. I have always maintained that one should not have an opinion of something that one knows nothing about. Before ripping anything apart, I personally choose to read/watch/listen to it, and then tear it to pieces, mocking everything about it. Partly (aside from the logical and obvious non-merit of any ignorant opinion) because uneducated opinions are a hallmark of modern society, and therefore should be despised. And secondly, it is far more entertaining to myself to be able to rip into somebody for their stupid "thoughts" while actually knowing more about what they're talking about then they do.

To continue...

First of all, a little background on Walt Whitman. He published Leaves of Grass in 1855, in the wake of some of the greatest poetry ever written (Tennyson, and the rest of the Romantic era poets were still quite popular, and the Victorian era was under full swing). He published with his own money. He was known to have written several reviews of his own book under fake names, praising the book highly, in order to boost sales. He was, earlier in his life, opposed to slavery, then switched later in life to be anti-abolitionist and maintained until his death the idea that even freed African-Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote. He is known as one of the fathers of free verse, or what can be called, in my opinion, the absolute total disregard of poetical structure due to a lack of skill. (This opinion does have a few exceptions. I have found a few poems in free verse written so cleverly and worded so well, with inner structures and hidden repetitions/alterations that I had to admit they were really rather good). He was also the main poetical subject of that ridiculously over-rated piece of crap film The Dead Poet's Society.

He was also a self-described deist, amending that title to say that he believed in all religions equally. Considering that most of humanity's religions are not mutually compatible, this is obviously a sign of insanity and/or a pathetically miniature IQ. (I'm reminded of a character in a movie who had tattoos from half a dozen different cultures. Another character pointed out that that doesn't make him a citizen of the world, it makes him full of BS).

The edition I bought is 679 pages long. I made it a little over 100 pages through the endless thousands of lines of blank, free verse. Rambling, rambling, rambling lines with no discernible point, no rhythmic or metric measure, no structure of any sort other than an occasional paragraph break. After the first hundred pages I started skipping around, reading a poem here, a poem there, throughout the whole book, reading a total of about 200 pages or so, trying to see if it would get better. It didn't. Here are a few examples of some of his better passages, as I'm afraid to show his really bad, or even mediocre poems, as they might cause the reader's eyes to boil out.

For him I Sing

For him I sing,
I raise the present on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present
        on the past,)
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the
       immortal laws,
To make himself by them the law unto himself.
(page 30)

Homosexual overtones aside, I'm forced to ask "HUH?"

There was a Child went Forth

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he
      became,
And that object became part of him for the day
     or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
(page 457)

Yah, as I said, rambling. He tended to do that quite often. The above poem actually continues on for dozens of lines more, describing the lilacs the child saw, then this, then that. Each "stanza" first named it, then said something nonsensically existentialist (without any actual philosophical thoughts put into it), then went on to list every mundane thing the child ever saw; listed one after the other, line after line, blah blah blah.

Isn't one of the most basic and admirable qualities of poetry the ability to extract and glorify real human emotion or lofty and idealistic thoughts through the use of equally lofty and beautiful language? Whatever happened to The Lady of Shallot, by Tennyson, or Eldorado, by Poe, or Ozymandias, by Shelley? That is Poetry. That is Art.

Let's get one thing straight. Walt Whitman was no poet. He was simply a man with an inclination towards verbosity as amazing as his poetical skill was not, with altogether too much time on his hands. His poems were considered rather risque, hence his current popularity, as anything today praising homosexuality, the responsibility-free lifestyle, and naturism is awarded greater merit based upon subject matter rather than quality.

Though I have no problem with the above subjects, as they are real parts of the emotional and philosophical human experience, praising the subject over the presentation is as insane as watching a presidential debate where the one screams "conservatism conservatism conservatism!!!" and the other screams "liberalism liberalism liberalism!!!" and having each side lauded by their respective followers for their political brilliance and amazing oratory skills.

Yet, aside from understanding why certain groups would admire the subject of some of Whitman's supposed "poetry", I can find no real value or quality in it.