Live Oak, with Moss

A lovely little publication. At its core is a well edited set of Whitman's set of 12 poems that later became part of the Calamus cluster, itself part of his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The Live Oak poems are some of his earlier ones and more importantly, his gayest.

There's an argument that the 12 poems in this order are basically Whitman's story of falling in love with a man, losing him, and reconciling himself to it. That structure then got diffused on reordering and editing in Leaves of Grass. So it's nice to see them all together in this original if unpublished order. Some of them poems are quite lovely.

The other part of this book I appreciated is Karen Karbiener's afterword, a critical essay discussing the poems and what they might have meant to Whitman. It's a helpful guide.

In addition the book has a lot of imagery. There's nearly 100 pages of illustrations by Selznick, or rather 100 pages of details of some 15 or so original illustrations. They're nice enough but didn't do anything for me. Also high quality photographs of the original manuscript which are nice to have on hand.

I've been reading the Calamus poems and it's nice to have this excerpt of the gay heart of the cluster with appropriate interpretation.