![]() ![]() But I've always thought that poetry was meant to be savored a little at a time. He does tend to get repetitive after a while, so I certainly wasn't able to read this in one sitting. I'm just going to say it: Walt Whitman was the King of List Poems. Reading that one, plus Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps (small poetry collections written during the Civil War and folded into later editions of Leaves of Grass), would have given me the background I needed for Voices in the Dead House, rather than trying to read the entire, huge final edition. Given that the book that inspired me to read Leaves of Grass was set in December 1862 and January 1863, what I *should* have read was the 1860-61 edition, the third of many, as Whitman constantly added, deleted, and edited poems from the original 1855 edition. ![]() More enjoyable for me were shorter poems like " When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," “ Ethiopia Saluting the Colors,” and " O Captain! My Captain!" It sometimes seemed like he was simply stringing together bunches of proper nouns or synonyms, rather than using imagery. ![]() Most of Walt Whitman's free verse poems are way too long, in my opinion. I tried to read this book of poetry because it was mentioned so frequently in Voices in the Dead House, a book I read and reviewed for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. ![]()
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