About
LeavesofGrass.Org was established in 2003 to promote the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass. It has served as an international clearinghouse for groups and individuals wishing to publicize their commemorative efforts. In addition, it has served as an Open Source publisher for a steady stream of historical discoveries in the long foreground to Leaves of Grass–an area abandoned by most scholars because it was assumed that this history was unrecoverable.
The curator is Mitchell Santine Gould, author of entries in Walt Whitman: an Encyclopedia, Whitman articles for The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Friend, Quaker History, and the Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America. Mitch specializes in Whitman’s Quaker origins during the Age of Sail, and is known as the historian who solved Walt Whitman’s Quaker Paradox.
Mitch has temporarily turned his attention away from historical research to focus on making Whitman’s life and works more accessible to a post-literate age. Identifying comics and animation as the most egalitarian media, he has for several years been preparing to animate one of Whitman’s most dramatic, and the same time, least appreciated poems: “As Nearing Departure (To My Soul).”