Walt Whitman

A century after his death, Whitman is still celebrated as America's greatest poet. In this startling new edition of his work, Whitman biographer Gary Schmidgall presents over two hundred poems in their original pristine form, in the chronological order in which they were written, with Whitman's original line breaks and punctuation. Included in this volume are facsimilies of Whitman's original manuscripts, contemporary-- and generally blistering-- reviews of Whitman's poetry (not surprisingly Henry James hated it), and early pre-"Leaves of Grass" poems that return us to the physical Whitman, rejoicing-- sometimes graphically-- in homoerotic love.
Unlike the many other available editions, all drawn from the final authorized or "deathbed" "Leaves of Grass," this collection focuses on the exuberant poems Whitman wrote during the creative and sexual prime of his life, roughly between 1853 and 1860. These poems are faithfully presented as Whitman first gave them to the world-- fearless, explicit, and uncompromised-- before he transformed himself into America's respectable, mainstream Good Gray Poet through thirty years of revision, self-censorship, and suppression.
Whitman admitted that his later poetry lacked the "ecstasy of statement" of his early verse. Revealing that ecstasy for the first time, this edition makes possible a major reappraisal of our nation's first great poet.
Gary Schmidgall is the author of several studies of Shakespeare and biographies of Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman. He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Socities and the Mellon and Guggenheim Foundations.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, working initially as a teacher and later (throughout the New York City area, and briefly in New Orleans) as a journalist and newspaper editor. In 1855, the self-published first edition of his masterpiece, "Leaves of Grass," appeared. Consisting of twelve untitled poems and a preface, it was too frank, unconventional, or shocking for most readers, receiving little attention in general, yet it was hailed by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." This book would become the poet's "life comfort" and "reson-for-being"--and his life's endeavor. To that end, Whitman prepared eight other published editions of "Leaves of Grass" over the next thirty-five years, always adding new poems and extensively changing those that had already appeared. The final (or "death-bed") edition of "Leaves of Grass" contained nearly four hundred poems.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman worked as a freelance journalist and frequently visited wounded soldiers at New York-area hospitals. In December of 1862, he went to Washington, D.C., to care for his brother, who had likewise been wounded. Profoundly moved by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. He remained in the nation's capitol for eleven years, always writing and earning a modest income at a variety of jobs (including a short stint as a clerk for the Department of the Interior).
After decades of literary neglect, Whitman came to be revered a America's "good gray poet" in his later years; he was a nineteenth-century celebrity of sorts, a national treasure. (This reputation has only increased in the century since his death.) Indeed, Whitman's final years brought many noted visitors and admirers (Oscar Wilde, Thomas Eakins, and the like) to his home in Camden, New Jersey. His prose works include "Democratic Vistas" and "Specimen Days."
Schmidgall, author of "Walt Whitman: A Gay Life" and several other studies, delivers an edition of Whitman that, at long last, lives up to the poet's initial intentions. This new volume presents over 200 poems in their original form and chronology, thereby retrieving the candor and exuberance Whitman displayed in the creative and sexual prime of his life. "Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892" also includes the poet's major prose discussions of his verse, his four elegies for Lincoln, his earliest poems, and many contemporary--and sometimes blistering--reviews of his fearless, explicit, and uncompromised work.
"Brilliantly discerning . . . The best single volume of Whitman] I have ever seen . . . Bold, generous, and unexpurgated."--Dana Gioia
"Schmidgall's thrilling new edition of Whitman restores the poet's true voice--at once radical and intimate, tender and triumphant. This book vividly reminds us that Whitman's poems are the soul's-cry and heart's-blood of the American imagination."--J. D. McClatchy
"Schmidgall has followed his biography of the poet] with a "Selected Poems," and the two books together represent an enormous contribution, an outpouring of Whitman interpretation and scholarship that is quite extraordinary . . . His "Selected Poems" is a feast of Whitmania . . . We scholars and students] need the earlier versions, written and arranged by the audacious younger Whitman, the one with the power to dazzle and amaze. Gary Schmidgall has done a marvelous job and a great service in presenting them."--Howard Nelson, "The Hollins Critic" (Hollins University, Virginia)
"Brilliantly discerning . . . The best single volume of Whitman] I have ever seen . . . Bold, generous, and unexpurgated."--Dana Gioia
"An engaging approach with] a fine introduction."--M. Jimmie Killingsworth, "American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 1999"
"Finally, an edition of Whitman that doesn't overwhelm with too much material or starve with too little. Perfect for the classroom. . . . Offers] the best poems in their original form, when they were still closest to Whitman's inspiration."--Ed Folsom, editor of the "Walt Whitman Quarterly Review"