Leaves of Ass
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, edited and with introduction by Christopher Morley, illustrations by Lewis G. Daniel (NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940)
Knockouts: Five Decades of Swimsuit Photography, including "The Bare Facts," a foreword by Frank Deford (NY: Sports Illustrated, 2001)
"Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot."
I am the poet of the Body, and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride, We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is the only development. Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? It is a trifle, they will wore than arrive there every one, and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close bare-bosom'd night--press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds--night of the large few stars! Still nodding night--mad naked summer night. "Song of Myself" (56)
Two smaller projects have occupied me this spring, and this was the first, a study in cl-ASS-ic American literature.
This volume of Walt is just like the one I had when I first read Mr. Whitman, bound in grass-like green fibers.
That is, the book was bound in grass-like fibers. I was not.
I wrote my senior year history term paper on Whitman, and I used this gift volume, illustrated by Lewis Daniel, as my text.
Over the weeks of work, the volume fell to pieces.
And the paper was not great.
Perhaps because I would have populated it in this way.