CliffsNotes on

Leaves of Grass

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About the Author

Life and Background
A Whitman Chronology

From Inscriptions

“One’s-Self I Sing”
“As I Ponder’d in Silence”
“For Him I Sing”
“To the States”
“I Hear America Singing”
“Poets to Come”
“To You”
“Thou Reader”

“Song of Myself”

Introduction
Sections 1-5, lines 1-98
Sections 6-19, lines 99-388
Sections 20-25, lines 389-581
Sections 26-38, lines 582-975
Sections 39-41, lines 976-1053
Sections 42-52, lines 1054-1347

From Children Of Adam

“To the Garden of the World”
“Spontaneous Me”
“Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals”
“As Adam Early in the Morning”

From Calamus

“In Paths Untrodden”
“Scented Herbage of My Breast”
“Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”
“When I Heard at the Close of the Day”
“Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?”
“Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes”
“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing”
“Full of Life Now”
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
“Song of the Broad-Axe”
“Pioneers! O Pioneers!”
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
“Beat! Beat! Drums!”
“Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
“As Consequent, Etc.”
“There Was a Child Went Forth”
“Passage to India”
“The Sleepers”
“To a Locomotive in Winter”
“As the Time Draws Nigh”
“So Long!”
“Queries to My Seventieth Year”
“America”
“Good-Bye My Fancy!”

Critical Analysis

Form
Style
Themes
The Quintessential American Poet
Whitman’s Achievement

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Quiz

1:  Published in 1892, the final version of Leaves of Grass is known as

a. the early edition

b. the final edition

c. the abridged edition

d. the deathbed edition
2:  Whitman is a poet of which two elements in man?

a. Heart and mind

b. Body and soul

c. Hand and heart

d. Ego and id
3:  In "I Hear America Singing," Whitman glorifies what about the United States?

a. Its faith in the underdog

b. Its creativeness of labor

c. Its heroic men and women

d. Its entrepreneurial idealism
4:  The poetry in Leaves of Grass clearly demonstrate Whitman's faith in

a. bureaucracy

b. federalism

c. democracy

d. socialism
5:  Which of Whitman's poems was called "A Poem of Walt Whitman, an American."

a. "Song of Myself"

b. "To You"

c. "Poets to Come"

d. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
6:  How did the American transcendental poets, such as Whitman, explain the findings of contemporary science?

a. They accepted it as a materialistic counterpart of spiritual achievement.

b. They considered scientific findings to be gifts from God.

c. They considered humans to be ignorant sparks of God and science to be a path to enlightenment.

d. They rejected science as the work of atheists.
7:  "To the Garden of the World" claims that

a. mankind longs for final judgment from God

b. the world is a gift from God to be cherished, not exploited

c. mankind endeavors to ascend to the Garden of Eden again, but only through love can this goal be reached

d. man is destroying the world by rebuking nature, and only love can repair the damage
8:  Which sense did Whitman seem particularly sensitive to, and thereby describe with the most acute awareness?

a. touch

b. smell

c. sight

d. sound
9:  In which poem are "Tan-faced children" and "Western youths" called upon to fell "primeval forests" and to cross rivers and mountains in order to reach the West?

a. "Spontaneous Me"

b. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!"

c. "In Paths Untrodden"

d. "I Hear America Singing"
10:  Leaves of Grass belongs to which form of poetry?

a. free verse

b. haiku

c. ballad

d. no particular form
11:  Whitman believed that poetry should be

a. spoken, not written

b. read, not spoken

c. created, not quoted

d. personal, not public
12:  Whitman's poem "A Passage to India" reflects upon his spirituality and his interest in

a. engineering achievements

b. Eastern culture

c. pioneering

d. colonialism



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