Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

Film and television

• "The Untold Want" features prominently in the Academy Award-winning 1942 film Now, Voyager, starring Claude Rains, Bette Davis, and Paul Henreid.[59]
• Dead Poets Society (1989) makes repeated references to the poem "O Captain! My Captain!", along with other references to Whitman.[60]
• Leaves of Grass plays a prominent role in the American television series Breaking Bad. Episode eight of season five ("Gliding Over All", after poem 271 of Leaves of Grass) pulls together many of the series' references to Leaves of Grass, such as the fact that protagonist Walter White has the same initials (and almost the same name) as Walt Whitman (as noted in episode four of season four, "Bullet Points", and made more salient in "Gliding Over All"), that leads DEA agent Hank Schrader to gradually realize Walter is the notorious drug dealer Heisenberg. Numerous reviewers have analyzed and discussed the various connections among Walt Whitman/Leaves of Grass/"Gliding Over All", Walter White, and the show.[61][62][63]
• In Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2011), Leaves of Grass is read by Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Olsen's characters.[64]
• In season 3, episode 8 of the BYUtv series Granite Flats, Timothy gives Madeline a first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass as a Christmas gift.[65]
• American singer Lana Del Rey quotes some verses from Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric" in her short film Tropico (2013).[66]
• In season 1, episode 3 of Ratched (2020) Lily Cartwright is seen reading Leaves of Grass while on psychiatric admission for "sodomy".
• In Bull Durham (1988), Susan Sarandon's character Annie Savoy reads Tim Robbins's character, Ebby Calvin "Nuke" Laloosh, excerpts from Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." When Nuke asks Annie who Walt Whitman plays for, she responds "He sort of pitches for the Cosmic All-Stars".
• In season 3, episode 5 of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Joe Lando's character, Byron Sully, reads an excerpt from Section 22 of "Song of Myself" to Dr. Mike. She becomes uneasy at the innuendos suggested in the poem.
• In season 4, episode 1 of Bojack Horseman (2014), the character of Mr. Peanutbutter is given a copy of Leaves of Grass by his ski instructor Professor Thistlethorpe, however it is attributed to "Walt Whitmantis" instead of Walt Whitman.

Literature

• "I Sing the Body Electric" was used by author Ray Bradbury as the title of both a 1969 short story and the book it appeared in (I Sing the Body Electric!), after first appearing as the title of an episode Bradbury wrote in 1962 for The Twilight Zone (I Sing the Body Electric).[67]
• Leaves of Grass features prominently in Lauren Gunderson's American Theatre Critics Association award-winning play I and You (2013).[68]
• Roger Zelazny's 1979 time-travel novel Roadmarks features a cybernetically-enhanced edition of Leaves of Grass, one of two such in the story, that acts as a side character giving the protagonist advice and quoting the original. The other "book" is Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.[69]
• Leaves of Grass appears in John Green's 2008 novel Paper Towns, in which the poem "Song of Myself" plays a particularly noteworthy role in the plot.[70]

Music

• "A Sea Symphony" (Symphony No.1) by Ralph Vaughan Williams contains text from Leaves of Grass, written between 1903 and 1909.[71]
• I Sing the Body Electric (1972) is the second album released by Weather Report.[72]
• Leaves of Grass: A Choral Symphony was composed by Robert Strassburg in 1992.[73]
• American singer Lana Del Rey references Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass in her song "Body Electric", from her EP Paradise (2012).[74]
• "Drei Hymnen Von Walt Whitman" (1919) by Paul Hindemith uses translated German text from "Ages and ages, returning at intervals"; "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"; "Beat! Beat! Drums!"[75]