Last summer I had the opportunity of redesigning the cover of Leaves of Grass, often called the most American of American poems, for an initiative to re-issue various world classics spearheaded by Plympton Inc. and the New York Public Library. During the course of a few weeks, I was surrounded by the thoughts, images, and poetry of this work. The following is an account of my design process, a colorful train of thought that has carried me through the creation of a new book cover for this timeless work of poetry.
BACKGROUND
Over a hundred years ago, Walt Whitman launched the first edition of Leaves of Grass upon an unsuspecting world. The poems collected within would prove to be revolutionary: written in a radically new style of free verse, Whitman’s lines of poetry drag beyond the margins — phrases repeating like music, descriptions growing and evolving indefinitely, working together to create a portrait of a man and his country.
Depicted here is the dark green cover of the first edition, rich with the outlines of unknown grasses, roots, and plants that foreshadow the uprooting of language and culture which takes place within the pages. Today, this edition of the book is a marvel not only because it was likely designed by the poet himself, but also because it perfectly laid out the groundwork for the task which was to accomplished by the poetry inside: the creation of a distinctly American lyrical voice.
Throughout his life, Whitman would add over 400 poems to the original work, edition after edition, all while retroactively editing past poems— and although it can be said that on its initial publication, Leaves of Grass was already wrapped within it’s finest packaging — for several reasons, it was important for me to avoid the temptation to restore, replicate, or reuse this design. This cover explicitly belongs to the 1855 edition of the work, and part of what makes Leaves of Grass such an unexampled piece of literature is that it was a work in constant evolution. Every version was different, as was the one I was working on: a digital copy in need of its own reimagining.
COLOR
I began my design process by searching for a palette to work with. Leaves of Grass evokes many colors, but what stands out to me in particular are the descriptions of the changing seasons. For most of my life I lived in an equatorial climate, where nature is rich and green all year-round, but after moving to the United States, this changed drastically.
The America I know is fire-red flatirons bursting from the ground; plains, leaves and grasses changing color with the seasons; black clouds over the Rocky Mountains; winter pine trees growing on clay hillsides and summer pine trees by rock-swallowed rivers. The landscape which surrounds me changes every day. It is different and just as beautiful.
It was only appropriate then, when designing the cover for this book, to begin with what this country gave me first: the palette of a changing landscape, the living, rotting and decaying colors of leaves which fall every year — the very same symbols which can be found in Whitman’s poetry.
PRESENTATION
I spent a lot of time wondering about why Whitman chose to name his work Leaves of Grass, and whether it was necessary to make a literal interpretation for a cover. As I found, the relationship between a single blade of grass and its roots and ecosystem is incredible—and it is a proper analogy for the emotions behind Whitman's poetry.
The lawns and plains which we observe daily are the result of underground and aboveground roots, stems, nodes, leaves and flowers connected by vast rhizomal structures that can cover long acres of land. In the poetry of Whitman, these structures become a metaphor for the individual and his relationship to the world around him. Each part is a picture of its universe, as Whitman writes in Song of Myself, “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."
As I searched for a way to express these ideas, I happened to encounter a solution in a very unrelated place: in the pattern designs of Henry Moore.
Though known mostly for his sculptures, Moore’s sketches and pattern designs are fascinating to study. The textiles he produced during WWII utilize violent, playful, and tribal motifs in a way which elevated the traditionally overlooked artform and demonstrated his skill at surface design. When they were released onto a forward-looking post-war society, the curtains, scarves, and dresses made with Moore’s patterns — though colorful and fauve — would remain unsevered from their origins. Moore’s flowers were intertwined with barbed wire, the contrast of today and yesterday visually evident. As he would write later: “to know one thing one must know the opposite.”
The concept of a designing a pattern — weblike, recurring and replicating, emphasizing individual and multitude — seemed perfectly adequate for the project. The only thing I needed was to find the right image to work with.
IMAGERY
Much has been written about Walt Whitman’s sexuality, and is seems as if the argument concerning his sexual orientation will never end. I, for one, doubt that the character portrayed in Leaves of Grass would be keen on the idea of placing his identity within any strict boundaries. Just as he advises the reader in the preface to avoid simplifying Leaves of Grass by cataloguing it within a school of literature, (and to see it as anything but "a human being…freely, truly, and fully on record") so would I expect him to reject the fragmentation of his sexuality, already an inseparable part of himself, into further, more abstract categories. As he writes:
Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,
These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself
Whitman’s language serves to undress us from our distinctions — it shows us that our bodies are not separate from our minds, and in such a way are also inseparable from our environment, our society and our country. It encourages to accept the love that we project outwardly towards anything, regardless of sex, color, language, or nature — and furthermore — to recognize this love as a love for ourselves.
Nowhere is this revolutionary vision for love and sexuality more evident than in Calamus and Children of Adam, two sections of Leaves of Grass discussing, respectively, the love of man and woman and the love of "comrades." Much of the controversies surrounding Whitman’s poems emerge from these pages. Upon reading Children of Adam, Ralph Waldo Emerson tried to discourage Whitman from including it in Leaves of Grass due to its explicit nature — to no avail — Whitman believed that the sexual nature of man was as essential as any other part of of his being.
The titulary symbol of Calamus is the sweet-flag plant, Acorus Calamus, whose root becomes a symbol of brotherly love within the poem. This is not an arbitrary choice: the plant is named after Kalamos, a mythological figure who drowned himself after the man he loved was taken by a river during a race. According to legend, Kalamos was subsequently turned into the plant, a reed used for writing in ancient times. The implications of the symbol, for writing, poetry, and love, would charge the poetry of Whitman with meaning. Upon learning this I knew that I had found my symbol, and that it was time to begin work on the book cover.
PRODUCTION
Using black, yellow, and green construction paper, I created various abstracted forms inspired by the calamus plant. As a reference, I used an old illustration of the plant which I found in the New York Public Library archives. (Pictured Above) The shapes were cut from the paper with an X-Acto knife, folded over and pieced together with paper glue. With several variations of the plant complete, I arranged them across a piece of black construction paper to be photographed and edited digitally.
Digitally, I replicated the motif at various angles throughout the canvas, arranging the copies of the design like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In order to add depth and complexity (and to fill in the gaps between these pieces) I cloned, replicated and superimposed the leaves upon each other. This method made the leaves look as if they were emerging from the darkness, while also making the pattern look more organic and less repetitive than a conventional design.
I continued by applying various solid-color layers above the pattern using the palette I devised earlier, and — through an assortment of blending modes — subtracted and darkened the color to match the picture in my mind. The pattern soon achieved a tension similar to that which Moore was able to express in his designs: the leaves seemed almost insect-like, alive though made from cardboard.
I chose to keep the period at the end of the title as a tribute to the original cover; the punctuation in the poem, accidental or otherwise, has always intrigued readers. Finally, I encased the title within a golden rectangle, textured with coffee-stains and bordered by a stitch-like dotted line.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
There's something incredible about Whitman's ability to contain the entire universe in Leaves of Grass, from the writer, whose "lead flies swiftly over the note-book," to the designer "lettering with blue and gold"— from the wealthy to the poor, from white man to black man and from man to woman, and then, from leaves of grass to the stars. In his poetry, all relationships are equivalent and integral to the makeup of the world—promising us a solidarity which can still embrace the freedom of our own individuality.
