On this day in 1855 Walt Whitman registered the title Leaves of Grass with the clerk of the United States District Court, New York. The first edition was published seven weeks later, on or about July 4th. Over the next 36 years, "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos," would revise and add to the original twelve poems, publishing seven more editions. His mission to "Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" realized "the most brilliant and original poetry yet written in the New World, at once the fulfillment of American literary romanticism and the beginnings of American literary modernism" (Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman) ... FULL STORY »
