Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

This fifth pick isn’t fiction. But like the best fiction, poetry can pierce through to the very essence. Although shaggy poet Whitman was the furthest thing from a soldier imaginable, he was deeply involved in the war effort nonetheless. After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman traveled to Virginia to find his wounded brother. He then chose to remain in Washington, DC, nursing wounded soldiers. Whitman’s war-time experiences gave rise to some of the finest poems in Leaves of Grass such as “The Wound-Dresser,” “Come Up from the Fields Father,” and “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim.”

Greece has Homer, Rome has Ovid, Ireland has Yeats, America has Whitman. His innovative verse-style continues to startle, 200 years after his birth: no rhyme, erratic rhythm, the shock of a helter-skelter flow of words unexpectedly halted. He is a cheerleader for America, setting out his stall in his preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass when he wrote: “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear… show more.