Audiobook · read by volunteers
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Read by Gord Mackenzie, Hugh McGuire, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Chris Mitchell, Eric, Brett Shand, wedschild, Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Chip, Denny Sayers (d. 2015) · 34 chapters · 19 h 16
About the book
When Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, he announced a new kind of poetry for a new kind of country. In long, rolling lines, free of the usual rhymes, he celebrates the body, the soul, the crowd, the farmer and the soldier, the city streets and the open road. He sings himself and the whole of humanity in the same breath, with a frankness about the senses that scandalised many of his contemporaries. Poems follow one another like waves, from the great Song of Myself to elegies and shorter pieces that range from tender to defiant. This recording presents the final edition of the work, read by many volunteers, and offers hours of one of the boldest voices in American poetry.
Introduction
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist, born on Long Island and active in New York. He worked as a printer and editor and, during the Civil War, as a volunteer nurse in army hospitals. He published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, and he went on revising and enlarging it for the rest of his life. The recording is based on the late edition associated with the year 1891.
Leaves of Grass is notable for its form and its subject. Whitman abandoned the regular metres of the poetry that came before him in favour of long lines shaped by breath and by the rhythm of speech, and he insisted on speaking of the body, of work and of democracy as proper themes for verse. Where much previous poetry, especially in English, had been decorous and allusive, his was candid and direct. At the time, that candour was considered immoral by some readers, and the book met with controversy as well as admiration.
His influence has been immense, reaching poets in every country and period. His voice, broad and generous, remains distinctive.
The recording has thirty-four sections, runs for over nineteen hours and is shared among numerous LibriVox volunteers, so that the listener hears many different readers. It is a large work, best enjoyed in portions, and each visit yields something new. Many listeners like to dip in and out, and to return to favourite poems. Whatever your habit, the collection offers a broad and generous picture of Whitman's art and of the country he wished to celebrate.
Public domain
Walt Whitman died in 1892: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text