Rinse, Lather, Repeat, Rinse...

Looking at the various versions of Leaves of Grass is quite interesting, entirely entertaining, and at times overwhelming.

At first glance of the 1860 edition compared to the 1855 version, the most obvious change is the immediate addition of a new poem: "Proto-Leaf." While the first edition of LoG wasn't very successful Whitman kept editing and revising - adding and subtracting. The addition of this cleverly titled first poem seems to hint at a reintroduction of Whitman to the masses. His way of saying here I am, and here is my first leaf, my proto-leaf. Thus with this poem Walt Whitman starts his new revision with a new/first leaf of grass. After this first poem, LoG jumps into the first poem of the 1860 version simply titled: Walt Whitman. Once again this revision hints at Whitman saying something along the lines of, "Here I am, here me roar (or rather, watch me loafe.)" Rather than having an unnamed poem in a collection of nameless poem, Whitman starts with several bangs, opening peoples eyes to the power and enticement of his poetry. It worked as this version was wildly more popular than the first. But Whitman was not satisfied with his work still and continued to edit.

Fast forward to 1867. Whitman has a new version published and there are many revisions yet again to his work of endlessness. We, being resourceful scholars of 2012, have been so graced to have the internet and access to Walt Whitman's own copy of the 1860 version of LoG complete with pencil annotations, revisions, and notes. It's truly amazing to be able to see Whitman's own process of deconstruction and reconstruction in his poetry. In the 1860 Blue Book it can be seen that Whitman work mark out several passages and rewrite them as shorter more coherent lines, or sometimes add to them as well. Also, it is seem that he would change the spellings of words, thus simplifying them. This can be seen in this changing of words such as dropped to dropt, or his omitting several e letters from words changing words such as entered to enter'd. I have two ideas as to why Whitman would have done this. One, because he was a man who well understood language and changed the spelling of his words so that the spelling matches the way the word is said. My second idea is to simply make the piece sound and look more poetic. Though this is my less favorable of the two ideas. Still it is interesting to be able to ponder over these questions. We may have Whitman's own copy, but we still don't know his exact thoughts and reasons for changing certain things.

Whitman revised his masterpiece until he died. Like any great artist Whitman was probably never happy with his own work and continued to try to make it better. Had he continued living, there would probably be several more editions of this great work as Whitman would have continued to analyze, destroy, and recreate LoG. Making a new poetic masterpiece each and every single time.