The text of this facsimile of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, published by Whitman in Brooklyn in 1855, is reproduced from a copy in the Library of Yale University. The eight pages of first comments and reviews, added to later copies of the first edition by Whitman and containing a review in The American Phrenological Journal specifically attributed to the poet himself, are from a copy in the collection of The Pierpont Morgan Library. The printed...

In this novel the author explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances in their house, on the roadway, in the markets. Only Dorothy's unexpected appearances from the dead help him to live in the moment and to find some peace. Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron has spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken,...

Now nearly halfway through his trek, Alan Christoffersen walks from South Dakota to Memphis, Tennessee. He covers more than 800 miles on foot, but it's the people he meets along the way who give the journey its true meaning.

Evangeline describes the betrothal of a fictional Acadian girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine to her beloved, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and their separation as the British deport the Acadians from Acadie in the Great Upheaval. The poem then follows Evangeline across the landscapes of America as she spends years in a search for him, at sometimes being near to Gabriel without realizing he was near.

This collection is "an astonishing achievement" that renders grief and illness in "supremely lyrical, brilliantly imagined . . . poetry of the highest order" (Connie Wanek). A grim prognosis, brain cancer, leaves the speaker in Kirkpatrick's Odessa fighting for her life. The tumor presses against her amygdalae, the "emotional core of the self," and central to the process of memory. In poems endowed with this emotional charge but void of sentimentality,...

"The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now--indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn't burn in this one"--Publisher's website.

The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot. It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central text in Modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will...

This masterpiece of eighteenth-century English poetry tells the epic tale of a sailor who endures a fate worse than death for killing an albatross. After callously shooting an albatross with his crossbow, a sailor is doomed to a nightmarish voyage from the Antarctic to the Equator before returning home as the sole survivor of the journey. When the haunting figure Life-in-Death wins his soul in a game of dice, the sailor is doomed to forever roam...

"Thousand Star Hotel confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor. From "with thanks to Sahra Nguyen for the refugee style slogan": They give the kids candy to bet. My daughter loses the first four rounds, she's a quiet wire as they take her candy away, piece by piece. When she finally wins, I ask if she wants to play again. No! she shouts, grabbing her candy, I want to go home! True...

When her dog Lulu dies, a girl grieves but then continues with her life.