
Collage of Myself
Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
Matt Miller(Author)
University of Nebraska Press
Published on 1. December 2010
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-8032-2534-3 (ISBN)
Description
Collage of Myself presents a groundbreaking account of the creative story behind America's most celebrated collection of poems. In the first book-length study of Walt Whitman's journals and manuscripts, Matt Miller demonstrates that until approximately 1854 (only a single year before the first publication of Leaves of Grass), Whitman-who once speculated that Leaves would be a novel or a play-was unaware that his ambitions would assume the form of poetry at all. Collage of Myself details Whitman's discovery of a remarkable new creative process that allowed him to transform a diverse array of texts into poems such as "Song of Myself" and "The Sleepers." Whitman embraced an art of fragments that encouraged him to "cut and paste" his lines into ever-evolving forms based on what he called "spinal ideas." This approach to language, Miller argues, represents the first major use in the Western arts of the technique later known as collage, an observation with significant ramifications for our reception of subsequent artists and writers. Long before the modernists, Whitman integrated found text and ready-made language into a revolutionary formulation of artistic production that anticipates much of what is exciting about modern and postmodern art. Using the Walt Whitman Archive's collection of digital images to study what were previously scattered and inaccessible manuscript pages, Miller provides a breakthrough in our understanding of this great American literary icon.
Reviews / Votes
""This is an important study, one requiring that the reader rethink a number of commonly held assumptions about Whitman and his Leaves of Grass .""-D. D. Kummings, Choice |""Miller's book is as valuable a publication on Whitman's poetry as any to have appeared for some time.""-M. Wynn Thomas, Walt Whitman Quarterly ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Target group
Adult education
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
21 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8032-2534-3 (9780803225343)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
12/2010
University of Nebraska Press
€49.49
Available for download
Person
Matt Miller is an assistant professor of English at Yeshiva University. His articles have appeared in Arizona Quarterly, Book History, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.
Content
List of Illustrations 000 Acknowledgments 000 Introduction 000 List of Abbreviations 000 1. How Whitman Used His Early Notebooks 000 2. Packing and Unpacking the First Leaves of Grass 000 3. Kosmos Poets and Spinal Ideas 000 4. Poems of Materials 000 5. Whitman after Collage / Collage after Whitman 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000