Goal - 3 books 256 pages
Total - 3 books 106 pages
Result - 150 pages to reach goal
Moving right along, but I can definitely tell that the first edition in my opinion is much superior to the deathbed edition. The first edition has a purity to it and a focus (the focus helped by being so short). This edition is more scattershot and if I'd continued in it without going to the first I don't think I'd have liked Leaves of Grass as much.
That said, it's still a great edition and there is much new here that I liked. But I do feel that overall it's a bit bloated. He has taken out the prose preface that really was almost my favourite part of the first edition and now the first part of the book is "Inscriptions", random poems sort of about who the book is for or the why of the book. I think the prose preface is superior to this.
You can't go from 100 pages to 400 without adding a lot, so this edition definitely has much more material than the first. I'm making my way through it, but I have to say, this is my biggest challenge so far, as can be seen from the way my total page count is falling behind my goal a bit. I'm always optimistic though, so I see it as a very good thing I'm reading this; it is difficult but I think so good for me and the poems really can be very inspiring. And as I mentioned previously, I started the year with some difficult works so when the easier ones come into play I hope to catch up!
No comments:
Post a Comment