Live Oak, with Moss

March 25, 2019
Whitman originally collected these 12 romantic, homoerotic poems into a secret handmade book in the 1850s, and they are now brought gracefully to life courtesy of children’s book author and illustrator Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret). Selznick writes at the outset that his drawings “are not meant to be illustrations of the poems but a framework, or a lens, through which they can be discovered.” The volume is presented in three sections. First, Selznick’s vibrantly colored drawings are standalone, forming their own silent narrative of desire and fulfillment. Selznick expertly captures the intensity of Whitman’s work, sensually rendering his phallic oak trees, adding collages of the cityscape of New Orleans (where Whitman explored his sexual preferences with more freedom), and dreamy cosmic imagery. In a clever touch, the drawn chronicle eventually fades into white as a lead-in to the second section, in which Whitman’s poems appear in their original form. Karbiener’s afterword closes out the book, with a compact history and contextualization of Whitman’s work. In harmony, the art, the poems, and the analysis all honor while illuminating Whitman’s work and make it more accessible to contemporary readers.