Preface Chapter 1 Life Youth and literary apprenticeship (1819-1850) The emergence of the poet (1851-1860) The war and its aftermath (1861-1873) The period of reflection and decline(1873-1892) Chapter 2 Historical and cultural contexts Democracy The body The land The culture Chapter 3 Poetry before the Civil War 1855: "Song of Myself" Other poems dating from the 1855 Leaves of Grass 1856: poems of sexuality and the body 1856: poems of the earth 1856: "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" 1860: Sea-Drift poems 1860: gendered clusters -"Children of Adam" and "Calamus" Chapter 4 Poetry after the Civil War Elegiac poems The emergence of the image Minor poetic modes Chapter 5 Prose works The 1855 preface Democratic Vistas Specimen Days Chapter 6 Critical reception The first fifty years, 1855-1905 1905-1955 1955-2005 Notes Further reading Index
