The first part of the review discusses the unique style of Leaves of Grass. Hale is fond of the poetic prose but is at odds with the arrangement of the book because the first edition didn't have any mention of a publisher nor the author which was so unusual that the bookstore clerk didn't even know the book existed. Hale assures the reader that if the clerk wasn't able to find the book the first time it was worth coming back a second time. It seems that Leaves of Grass made a good impression on Hale, yet, he is confounded on how to receive a work so different from the standard style of poetry. Whitman changed the rules by publishing Leaves of Grass, some praised the originality of the work, others were struck off guard by the change.
Later in review Hale assesses some of the writing from "Song of Myself". This part of the review was especially interesting because Hale was able to make connections between some verses and events of the 1850's, a connection few modern day readers could make.
"Here is the story of the gallant seaman who rescued the passengers
on the San Francisco:—
'I understand the large heart of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
and death chasing it up and down the storm.'"
Even though the verse above makes it implicit what had happened, the 1850's reader would have been touched more by this reference. Also, Hale draws our attention to the vividness of the the text, the certainty with which Whitman describes eventsmakes it seem as though he was present when they happened. However, in the 1850's being in as many different places as Whitman describes was rare for any one person, so Hale questions the validity of the observations. Eventually Hale comes to the conclusion that the validity isn't what matters, what does matter is the visual Whitman can put into a readers head. The way Whitman describes events takes the reader to the meadow, to San Francisco, to New York city; Whitman's writing takes the reader across a continent which is a luxury most people in those days couldn't afford otherwise.
Hale, Edward Everett. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." The North American Review 82 (January 1856): 275-7.
The next review i found really confused me because I hadn't realized that Walt Whitman himself wrote the review. I found this odd for several reasons. For one,he author of the review is calling Whitman an arrogant and egotistical person. Next it seems that the review is mocking Whitman's proximity to nature, the poetic prose and Leaves of Grass as a whole.If I am correct and Whitman did indeed write this review than it kind of makes Whitman seem like a bipolar masachyst. Why else would he write a book of poem in which he spills his heart out, finds tranquility with himself and the world, only to have disdain for it in the end?
Perhaps this is how the poet "grows". Whitman became his own worst critic. This duality of thinking, being the poet and the critic, is what creates Whitman's bipolar style of writing in which he constantly contradicts himself.
This next review shows the interest and excitment with which Leaves of Grass was greeted by some. Charles Eliot Norton describes Walt Whitmans's poetry as,"a compound of the New England transcendentalist and New York rowdy". Whitmans poetry seems pretty subtle in it's style to today's readers but I imagine that over a hundred and fifty years ago the public received the text with some shock. Whitman described nature in a different way than his contemporaries had, he used words and ideas that were unfamiliar to the public at that time. "... but that he was a kosmos, is a piece of news we were hardly prepared for. Precisely what a kosmos is, we trust Mr. Whitman will take an early occasion to inform the impatient public."
Today we have a much better grasp of the existential and transcendential ideas Whitman was speaking of becuase we are familair with them now but in the 18th hundreds they were just beginning to formulate.
Norton, Charles Eliot. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." Putnam's Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Arts 6 (September 1855): 321-3.
The next review i found really confused me because I hadn't realized that Walt Whitman himself wrote the review. I found this odd for several reasons. For one,he author of the review is calling Whitman an arrogant and egotistical person. Next it seems that the review is mocking Whitman's proximity to nature, the poetic prose and Leaves of Grass as a whole.If I am correct and Whitman did indeed write this review than it kind of makes Whitman seem like a bipolar masachyst. Why else would he write a book of poem in which he spills his heart out, finds tranquility with himself and the world, only to have disdain for it in the end?
Perhaps this is how the poet "grows". Whitman became his own worst critic. This duality of thinking, being the poet and the critic, is what creates Whitman's bipolar style of writing in which he constantly contradicts himself.
This next review shows the interest and excitment with which Leaves of Grass was greeted by some. Charles Eliot Norton describes Walt Whitmans's poetry as,"a compound of the New England transcendentalist and New York rowdy". Whitmans poetry seems pretty subtle in it's style to today's readers but I imagine that over a hundred and fifty years ago the public received the text with some shock. Whitman described nature in a different way than his contemporaries had, he used words and ideas that were unfamiliar to the public at that time. "... but that he was a kosmos, is a piece of news we were hardly prepared for. Precisely what a kosmos is, we trust Mr. Whitman will take an early occasion to inform the impatient public."
Today we have a much better grasp of the existential and transcendential ideas Whitman was speaking of becuase we are familair with them now but in the 18th hundreds they were just beginning to formulate.
Norton, Charles Eliot. "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." Putnam's Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Arts 6 (September 1855): 321-3.
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