Leaves of Grass 1133her to vigilance, whispering the terrified warning
that every word and gesture must be measured.” This
description perfectly captures the ways that Lily
manages to be at once “weak and defenceless” while
another part of her self is “sharpening” and aware of
the need for calculation.
Later in the novel, when she is fully aware of
Trenor’s expectations, she explains her situation
regarding her debt thus:
He made about nine thousand dollars . . . at
the time, I understood that he was speculat-
ing with my own money: it was incredibly
stupid of me, but I knew nothing of business.
Afterward I found out that he had not used
my money—that what he said he had made
for me he had really given me. It was meant
in kindness, of course; but it was not the
sort of obligation one could remain under.
Unfortunately I had spent the money before I
discovered my mistake; and so my legacy will
have to go to pay it back.”This passage demonstrates a new awareness on
Lily’s part, and yet her suggestion that Trenor’s gift
was “meant in kindness” is still a kind of willful igno-
rance on her part concerning her sexuality.
At the conclusion of the novel, Lily ultimately
settles her debts and refrains from blackmailing
Bertha Dorset. This ending suggests that she has
been restored to a kind of moral purity and inno-
cence. However, determining whether innocence or
experience plays the bigger part in Lily’s demise, and
thus whether her demise is actually some kind of
triumphant ending, is not a particularly useful exer-
cise. Not only can arguments be made for both cases,
but it seems that the dynamic relationship between
innocence and experience is part of what gives the
novel its complexity and its richness.
Lisa J. Schneider
wHiTmaN, waLT Leaves of Grass
(1855, 1891–1892)
Walt Whitman (1819–92) devoted his writing
career to expanding and reorganizing Leaves of
Grass, and this collection of poems appeared in nine
very different editions in the course of his lifetime.
The first edition, published in 1855, contains 12
untitled poems whereas the final edition, authorized
by Whitman shortly before his death, was published
in 1891–92 and contains 389 poems, each bearing
its now familiar title.
Leaves of Grass changed poetry forever by intro-
ducing new poetic forms, styles, and subjects. Whit-
man’s poetry is free of the conventional, confining
meters and rhyme schemes that had characterized
poetry for centuries, and his poetry equally moves
beyond stylized language and restricted subject mat-
ter. He uses informal, familiar language and treats a
much broader range of subjects, including the small,
easily overlooked details that make up daily life, such
as breathing. Leaves of Grass has had an enormous
impact on poets in the United States and around
the world. Among the better known American poets
clearly influenced by Whitman are William Carlos
Williams, Langston Hughes, Hart Crane, Marianne
Moore, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert
Duncan, and Adrienne Rich.
Whitman’s poetry seeks to be inclusive, to cap-
ture everything of America’s past, present, and
future. More specifically, his poems imaginatively
record and transform the lived experiences of mid-
to late 19th-century America, including slavery, the
Civil War, nation building, industrialization, urban-
ization, and technological innovation. Among the
major themes to be found in Leaves of Grass are the
American dream, community, death, freedom,
love, nature, science and technology, sex and
sexuality, spirituality, and work.
James B. KelleydeatH in Leaves of Grass
In his poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rock-
ing,” first published under another title in 1859,
Walt Whitman observes that the subject of death
has been integral to his poetry from the very begin-
ning, and in “Starting from Paumanok” (1860), he
states that he will present to the reader “poems of
my body and of mortality” alongside “poems of my
soul and of immortality” (ll. 72, 73). Indeed, death
emerges alongside the joys of life as a central theme
already in the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855)
and takes on greater presence and significance in