Dia Exemplares [Specimen Days] by Walt Whitman

Structured from personal notes and memories of a lifetime, Specimen Days is a collection of descriptions, excerpts of prose poetry, lists, short essays, some consideration of politics, portraits of illustrious characters and ordinary people, letters, and quotes. The book design was inspired by Whitman’s habit of storing dry tree leaves in his notebooks. The cover and inner pages are illustrated with leaf silhouettes. Each of the 1,000 copies of the edition has a different leaf on the cover, resulting in a print run of 1,000 unique covers.