Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Throughout his nearly half-century career as a poet, Walt Whitman published numerous books of poetry, including such volumes as Drum-Taps, Passage to India, As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, and Leaves of Grass. Today, readers associate Whitman almost exclusively with the last title in this list, largely because he eventually incorporated his other published works into the book of poems that has now become all but synonymous with his name. Before he died in 1892, Whitman compiled a comprehensive “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass that included his other various collections of poetry, indicating that this final edition of Leaves of Grass was the version of his life's work that he wanted preserved for posterity. Around the same time, however, Whitman wrote in a note to himself, “I do not suppose that I shall ever again have the afflatus I had in writing the first Leaves of Grass” (quoted in Bradley and Blodgett 1965: xxix, italics in original).Inspired by a Samuel Hollyer engraving of a daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison (1854). Tonal graphite drawing by Doug DeVinny.The original edition of Leaves of Grass published in 1855 differs in many ways from the 1892 edition that Whitman established as his poetic legacy. The deathbed version of Leaves of Grass, with its nearly four hundred poems meticulously parceled into discrete clusters, feels like a retrospective compilation designed ... log in or subscribe to read full text