Leaves of Grass

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I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.

Leaves of Grass is a collection of poetry by American author Walt Whitman.

Many editions of Leaves of Grass exist, as Whitman revised it many times before his death. The original version was published in 1855, then a revised edition in 1856, then another in 1860, then ANOTHER in 1867, 1881, 1881, 1889, and 1891.

Poems from Leaves of Grass you might recognize:

• "Song of Myself"
• "I Sing the Body Electric"
• "I Hear America Singing"
• "O Captain! My Captain!"

Tropes used in Leaves of Grass include:

• Epic Catalog: The Trope Codifier.
• In Harmony with Nature: Large parts of "Song of Myself" are about the narrator realizing that everything is interconnected, and about him getting in tune with nature.
• Magnum Opus: And Whitman knew it. He revised it over and over again, and spent many years writing the first edition.

Appearances of Leaves of Grass in Pop Culture:

Film

• The climactic performance at the end of Fame is entitled after (and based somewhat on) "I Sing the Body Electric".
• "The Untold Want" features prominently in the Academy Award-winning 1942 film Now, Voyager, starring Claude Rains, Bette Davis, and Paul Henreid.
• Dead Poets Society makes repeated references to the poem "O Captain! My Captain!", along with other references to Whitman himself.
• In Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2011), Leaves of Grass is read by Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Olsen's characters.
• American singer Lana Del Rey quotes some verses from Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric" in her 2013 short film Tropico.

Literature

• In the original novel of Eddie and the Cruisers by P.F. Kluge, Eddie is inspired by Leaves of Grass and Walt Whitman (and not, as in the film, by Arthur Rimbaud and his poetry).
• "I Sing the Body Electric" was used by author Ray Bradbury as the title of both a 1969 short story and the book it appeared in (I Sing the Body Electric!), after first appearing as the title of an episode Bradbury wrote in 1962 for The Twilight Zone.
• Roger Zelazny's time-travel novel Roadmarks features a cybernetically-enhanced edition of Leaves of Grass, one of two such in the story, that acts as a side character giving the protagonist advice and quoting the original. The other "book" is Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.
• Leaves of Grass appears in John Green's novel Paper Towns, in which the poem "Song of Myself" plays a particularly noteworthy role in the plot.

Live-Action TV

• Prior to his book, Ray Bradbury used the title of "I Sing the Body Electric" for a 1962 episode he wrote for The Twilight Zone.
• Leaves of Grass plays a prominent role in the American television series Breaking Bad. Episode eight of season five ("Gliding Over All", after poem 271 of Leaves of Grass) pulls together many of the series' references to Leaves of Grass, such as the fact that Walter White has the same initials as Walt Whitman (as noted in episode four of season four, "Bullet Points", and made more salient in "Gliding Over All"), that leads Hank Schrader to realize Walt is Heisenberg. Numerous reviewers have analyzed and discussed the various connections among Walt Whitman/Leaves of Grass/"Gliding Over All", Walt, and the show.
• In season 3, episode 8, of the BYUtv series Granite Flats, Timothy gives Madeline a first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass as a Christmas gift.

Theatre

• Leaves of Grass features prominently in Lauren Gunderson's 2013 American Theatre Critics Association award-winning play I and You.