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Whitman: Poetry and Prose

by Walt Whitman

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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1,2781014,893 (4.39)3
This is the most comprehensive volume of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. This is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, that prompted Emerson's famous message to Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career". These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric", and a preface announcing the author's poetic theories, were the first stage of a massive, lifelong work. Six editions and some thirty-seven years later Leaves of Grass had become one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. Each edition involved revisions of earlier poems and the incorporation of new ones. In 1856, for example, he added such poems as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Spontaneous Me"; in the third edition (1860) "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and two new sections, "Calamus" and "Children of Adam". In the fourth (1867) he incorporated the Civil War poems published a few years earlier as Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, including the poems on the death of Lincoln, notably "When Lilacs Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd." And so it went, a triumphant progress, hailed by Emerson, Thoreau, Rossetti and others, but also, as with the sixth edition in 1881-82, beset by charges of obscenity for such poems as "A Woman Waits for Me." Printed here is the final, the great culminating edition of 1891-92, the last supervised by Whitman himself just before his death. Whitman's prose is no less extraordinary. Specimen Days and Collect (1882) includes reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City that will fascinate readers in the twentieth, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals, and trenchant comments on books and authors. Democratic Vistas (1871), in its attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the Civil War, is relevant to conditions in our own time, and November Boughs (1888) brings together retrospective prefaces, opinions, random autobiographical bits that are in effect an extended epilogue on Whitman's life, works, and times. Here it all is, the complete Whitman-elegiac, comic, furtive, outrageous-the most innovative and original of American authors.… (more)
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Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
FROM AMAZON: This Library of America edition is the biggest and best edition of Walt Whitman's writings ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. It is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, which prompted Emerson’s famous message to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric,” and a preface announcing the author’s poetic theories were the first stage of a massive, lifelong work. Six editions and some thirty-seven years later, Leaves of Grass became one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. ( )
  Gmomaj | Jan 14, 2024 |
After having read the collection, I won't go as far as saying I'm a fan of Whitman's—but it was a more than worthwhile experience to see how his work stood out, especially stylistically, from others' at the time. Heartening, too, to see experimentation in different genres. Evidence here of what a complex and contradictory being one human can be.
  KatrinkaV | Aug 11, 2023 |
The end all and be all. Whitman makes my blood dance. ( )
  LibroLindsay | Jun 18, 2021 |
As Ralph Waldo Emerson is the essayist of America's literature, so Whitman is its poet. Who can deny the delight of crafts like "the transparent green-shine" and "[I] am not contain'd between my hat and boots"? ( )
  chrisvia | Apr 29, 2021 |
Walt Whitman was one of the first people that the United States of America could really claim as a poet. Of course, we had Edgar Allan Poe, but he wasn’t really appreciated in his own time, despite inventing so many genres. As such, this collection contains all of Whitman’s Poetry and Prose works. It includes the original version of Leaves of Grass, and it also includes the last version of Leaves of Grass that Whitman was alive to approve of.

The prose is something that I was not familiar with. I have read Leaves of Grass in one form or another before this point. I don’t remember which version it was, but it might have also had two versions included together. I would have to check. Going back to the prose; it contains an Autobiography of sorts. It talks about the life and times that Whitman lived through; probably with a sweet beard.

There really isn’t much else to say about this book. My only real complaint is that the paper used in this volume is a bit thin and delicate. Also, the book doesn’t really explain why it chose to include two versions of Leaves of Grass in an explicit manner. Perhaps it does later on in the notes, but I don’t usually bother with notes that come after the fact. I might have to look that up.

Now that I researched a bit, it does occur to me that I read about the critical response to his free verse poems. They did not follow the British Model of Poetry, they were too new. They didn’t have any real meter or rhyme scheme and weren’t a copy of Shakespeare or something. So people were bewildered and annoyed at this new thing. Also, some of the poems were very homoerotic and the public didn’t like that. At times it has been an open acceptance of his works, and at others, it has been a vitriolic attack on everything that Whitman’s poetry stands for.

Other than the thinness of the paper used in this book and the fact that it doesn’t address these issues with the poetry in a forward or some other portion of the book, this is a great resource. It doesn’t feel like a book you can really flip through, since the pages are so thin, and the book is pretty old. It doesn’t help that it is a library book and as a rule, I don’t mess with library books. ( )
  Floyd3345 | Jun 15, 2019 |
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Walt Whitmanprimary authorall editionscalculated
Kaplan, JustinEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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This is the most comprehensive volume of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. This is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, that prompted Emerson's famous message to Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career". These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric", and a preface announcing the author's poetic theories, were the first stage of a massive, lifelong work. Six editions and some thirty-seven years later Leaves of Grass had become one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. Each edition involved revisions of earlier poems and the incorporation of new ones. In 1856, for example, he added such poems as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Spontaneous Me"; in the third edition (1860) "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and two new sections, "Calamus" and "Children of Adam". In the fourth (1867) he incorporated the Civil War poems published a few years earlier as Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, including the poems on the death of Lincoln, notably "When Lilacs Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd." And so it went, a triumphant progress, hailed by Emerson, Thoreau, Rossetti and others, but also, as with the sixth edition in 1881-82, beset by charges of obscenity for such poems as "A Woman Waits for Me." Printed here is the final, the great culminating edition of 1891-92, the last supervised by Whitman himself just before his death. Whitman's prose is no less extraordinary. Specimen Days and Collect (1882) includes reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City that will fascinate readers in the twentieth, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals, and trenchant comments on books and authors. Democratic Vistas (1871), in its attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the Civil War, is relevant to conditions in our own time, and November Boughs (1888) brings together retrospective prefaces, opinions, random autobiographical bits that are in effect an extended epilogue on Whitman's life, works, and times. Here it all is, the complete Whitman-elegiac, comic, furtive, outrageous-the most innovative and original of American authors.

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