from+Preface+to+the+1855+Edition+of+Leaves+of+Grass


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Leaves of Grass**: Is a collection of poems by Walt Whitman


 * Author's Purpose**: Whitman tells the reader that America symbolizes freedom for all citizens, for everyone, white black, latino, poor, rich... This is what makes our country unique from all the others. The country was split into the slave states and free states when the poem was written. Whitman states that we all our one people in no matter if we have differences. His purpose for this poem/ preface was to tell Americans thatif we treat everyone with equality we will have a undivided, great America!


 * Whitman wrote this book to due to Robert Emerson's poem "the poet" which expressed the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's [|virtues] and [|vices].


 * Lesson:** If we all (Americans) become one, the nation will become as one.

//**Quote:**// He learns the lesson … he places himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions … he finally ascends and finishes all … he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond … he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown … by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. (11)

> > **Poem:** //"Leaves of Grass" [|Preface to the Leaves of Grass]//
 * Technique:**
 * Rhetorical pauses (states things that are suppose to be thought about and not answered, or does not have a right or wrong answer)

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