Five works in one collection. This audiobook of his treasured poetry collection walks you through a time when the American Experiment came to a new maturity; when the Transcendentalist Movement forever changed life and poetry.

Work 1: Leaves of Grass
Written as a compilation of poems in the mid-1800s celebrating humanity, the value of the human mind, and nature. These poems in this collection were heavily inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, himself a romantic, and the Transcendentalist Movement that was popular at the time. While most of the poems offer praise to nature and a person’s relative role in it, the title itself, Leaves of Grass, is a pun minimizing the value of the very paper that they were written on.

Work 2: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman's Letter Correspondence
The very complex relationship between Emerson and Whitman was publicly displayed in open letters that they had scribed to one another. Emerson, enthusiastically welcoming Whitman to his great career, made a very public proclamation of awe-inspiring praise to the poet.

Work 3: O Captain! My Captain!
Written about the death of President Abraham Lincoln, this poem emphasizes the grief and sorrow felt by the American people in the throes of mourning upon his assassination.

Work 4: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Written in the summer of 1865 during the country’s profound national mourning over the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, this poem was a pastoral elegy referencing the recently concluded Civil War. Whitman uses imagery and symbols to describe the president, his death, and the emotional experience.

Work 5: A Complete Biography of Walt Whitman by CSA Publishing

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