We took it to the woods and read it there, and there it has remained for 25 years, propped between creek stones on the cabin desk along with Thoreau and Emerson and Yeats and the King James edition.
It was a new kind of writing in 1855 when first self-published, yet caused no stir. Today it is impossible to imagine American poetry without him.
To us, every time we open the book again, and feel its heft in our hands, and read in the silence among trees, it is as if the Good Gray Poet were speaking directly to our centers for the first time, and we are thrilled anew with the cadence and lull, the grand sweep of the country, and the vastness of a single soul.
Read for yourself. Click to enlarge.
copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved
