In the 1850s, Walt Whitman wrote twelve poems in a small handmade book he entitled “Live Oak, with Moss.” The poems were Whitman’s first sustained attempt to write about the naturalness of love beyond traditional heteronormative boundaries. They are intensely private reflections on the attraction he felt for men, and they also present a new chapter in literary and social history: in these poems, Whitman attempts to establish a definition of same-sex love decades before the word “homosexual” is in common parlance. Though Whitman cut up the notebook, the original sequence of poems was discovered about 100 years later and has remained largely unknown to the general public. New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Award–winning illustrator Brian Selznick offers a provocative visual narrative of “Live Oak, with Moss,”and Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener reconstructs the story of the poetic cluster’s creation and destruction. Their reassembled, reinterpreted edition of Whitman’s Live Oak, with Moss (Abrams ComicArts, 2019) serves as a source of inspiration and cause for celebration.

Karen Karbiener is a Whitman scholar and teaches at New York University. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she has published widely on Whitman, including an edition of Leaves of Grass, two audiobooks on Whitman’s life and influence, a book introducing Whitman’s poetry to children, and a collaboration with Brian Selznick on a new edition of Whitman’s “Live Oak, with Moss” poems. Karbiener is the president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, a 501c3 nonprofit organization serving as an organizing center for cultural activism and poetry-related events.

Brian Selznick is the author and illustrator of many books for children, including The Invention of Hugo Cabret, winner of the Caldecott medal and the basis for the Oscar-winning movie Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese. He’s also the author and illustrator of Wonderstruck (made into a movie directed by Todd Haynes with a screenplay by Selznick), as well as The Marvels. His most recent works include Baby Monkey, Private Eye, written by his husband David Serlin, and Live Oak, With Moss with poems by Walt Whitman. Selznick is also the illustrator for the 20th anniversary editions of the beloved Harry Potter series.