Simplicity

Well, I finished the preface of Leaves Of Grass today under interesting circumstances. Sitting and waiting for my tires to be changed. It took 5 hours! Mostly due to incompetence, but that's another whole story because the new tires are happily on my vehicle and I should be good to go for at least another 5 years. So, back to Whitman. I'm glad it took them 5 hours - I got to bite & chew, bite & chew my way through the preface. I decided to save the poems themselves for another day. There's 12 poems, so should take a few readings to chew on those again. Cheated and found out this is not the Leaves of Grass I read as a young grizzly. This is a copy the first edition (I peeked at the afterword a bit - this is put out in anniversary of the 150th year since it's first publication). The paperback I had torn into was something like "the complete leaves of grass" because Whitman kept adding to it year after year till it got itself good and thick.

The preface was both a chore and a joy. Lots and lots of quoatable lines & lots of lots of "lemme think a bit". It's put together in a pretty complex manner, mostly trying to convince the reader that they are in the presence of great poetry. Lots of lopsided arguments trying to prove that, but still fun to read through and consider swallowing. The funniest bit arrives just about right smack dab in the middle of this fairly densely worded 14 page diatribe:

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity. . .nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness."

The preface, to this reader, is not simple. I have a hard time making up my mind if the preface is excess or simply full of definiteness. I'm sure Whitman's call would be that his verboseness is simply because of his complete attempt to be definite. I can simply say I'm not sad I read it, and I would recommend it as a good read for anyone interested in high ego gratification (on Whitman's part).