Andrew McNeely’s Reviews > Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition > Status Update

Whitman would have thought Camus’ smiling Sysiphus absurd:

I shall go with the rest,
We cannot be stopped at a given point…that is no satisfaction; /
We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time. /
If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes and dung; /
If maggots and rats ended us, then suspicion and treachery and death.

I think if everyone committed themselves to a thorough study of “Song of Myself,” it would heal, like, 80% of our nation’s divisions.

“I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breath the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.”

I’m welcoming America’s 250th anniversary by reading who else but our greatest bard. All of the unrivaled art that America has contributed in literature, music, and film is indebted to the form Whitman inaugurated. This edition also includes Whitman’s original introduction to the 1855 edition which apparently never appeared in the later editions of Leaves of Grass. Every American should read it this July 4th.