Banned book by Walt Whitman

Poetry is certainly no stranger to censorship, and neither is Walt Whitman. His collection of work known as Leaves of Grass is a compilation that he spent his entire career shaping, growing and editing, but was first published in 1855. Not only was Leaves of Grass challenged by society, it was challenged by his own publisher at one time, who demanded that certain more controversial pieces be left out of the work such as “A Woman Waits for Me”, and “I Sing the Body Electric”. Rather than accepting the censorship, Whitman moved on to a different publisher. The poet was also at one time threatened with prosecution over the work, but that wasn’t the only sacrifice he made for his poetry, even having lost his job at the Department of the Interior over it when it offended his boss.

Many make the argument that Whitman was far ahead of his time with the type of poetry he was writing, which is one of the reasons so many found it inappropriate and offensive. Many of the principle challenges to the book have been that it is vulgar, that it contains too much sexuality and blatant references to homosexuality in particular, which earned it the designation of breaking obscenity laws. Leaves of Grass was even legally banned in Boston, but libraries all over the nation refused to circulate the book, and critics everywhere lambasted the work for its indecency. When confronted with allegations such as homosexuality however, Whitman denied any such associations.