Examines what makes "Leaves of Grass"--Particularly the original edition--so distinctive and influential, including the use of the first person and the poet's views on sex, death, and other topics, and details its effect on other poets.
In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams sets aside the mass of biography and literary criticism that have accumulated around the work and person of Walt Whitman, and attempts to go back to Leaves of Grass as he first encountered it, to explore why Whitman's epic …
"In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop…