![]() ![]() “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature,” he wrote. But Whitman went even further in his preface. ![]() ![]() In his preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman claimed of the United States, “Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall,” echoing Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous dictum in 1840’s “A Defence of Poetry”: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Shelley was referring to the role that art and culture play in shaping the desires and will of people, which eventually come to be reflected in the law. How Puberty Kills Girls’ Confidence Claire Shipman, Katty Kay, and JillEllyn Rileyīut for Whitman, poetry wasn’t just a vehicle for expressing political lament it was also a political force in itself. ![]()
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