The Portable Walt Whitman
Description
A comprehensive collection of Whitman's most beloved works of poetry, prose, and short stories When Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855 it was a slim volume of twelve poems and he was a journalist and poet from Long Island, little-known but full of ambition and poetic fire. To give a new voice to the new nation shaken by civil war, he spent his entire life revising and adding to the work, but his initial act of bravado in answering Ralph Waldo Emerson's call for a national poet has made Whitman the quintessential American writer. This rich cross-section of his work includes poems from throughout Whitman's lifetime as published on his deathbed edition of 1891, short stories, his prefaces to the many editions of Leaves of Grass, and a variety of prose selections, including Democratic Vistas, Specimen Days, and Slang in America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Michael Warner is a professor of English at Rutgers University. His most recent works include American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, and his essays and journalism have appeared in the Village Voice, the Nation, and other magazines.
Content
Poems From Leaves Of Grass (dates indicate first book publication)
1855: Song of Myself A Song for Occupations To Think of Time The Sleepers I Sing the Body Electric Faces There Was a Child Went Forth Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
1856: Unfolded Out of the Folds Song of the Broad-Axe To You This Compost Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Song of the Open Road A Woman Waits for Me To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire Spontaneous Me A Song of the Rolling Earth
1860: Starting from Paumanok From Pent-up Aching Rivers Me Imperturbe I Hear America Singing As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life You Felons on Trial in Courts The World below the Brine I Sit and Look Out All Is Truth Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking Native Moments Once I Pass'd through a Populous City Once I Pass'd through a Populous City (draft version) Facing West from California's Shores As Adam Early in the Morning Live Oak, with Moss I. (Not Heat Flames up and Consumes) II. (I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing) III. (When I Heard at the Close of the Day) IV. (This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful) V. (Calamus 8: "Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me") VI. (What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?) VII. (Recorders Ages Hence!) VIII. (Calamus 9: "Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted") IX. (I Dreamed in a Dream) X. (O You Whom I Often and Silently Come) XI. (Earth! My Likeness) XXI. (To a Western Boy) Calamus: In Paths Untrodden Scented Herbage of My Breast Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand For You O Democracy These I Singing in Spring Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances The Base of All Metaphysics (added 1871) Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me? Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone Of Him I Love Day and Night City of Orgies To a Stranger I Hear It Was Charged Against Me We Two Boys Together Clinging Here The Frailest Leaves of Me A Glimpse Sometimes with One I Love Among the Multitude That Shadow My Likeness Full of Life Now To Him That Was Crucified To a Common Prostitute To You Mannahatta A Hand-Mirror Visor'd As if a Phantom Caress'd Me So Long!
1865-66: Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865-66): Shut Not Your Doors Beat! Beat! Drums! City of Ships Cavalry Crossing a Ford Bivouac on a Mountain Side An Army Corps on the March (1865-66) By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame Come Up from the Fields Father Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods The Wound-Dresser When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer A Farm Picture Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun To a Certain Civilian Years of the Modern Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado (1865-66) Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd I Saw Old General at Bay Look Down Fair Moon Reconciliation (1865-66) When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1865-66) O Captain! My Captain! (1865-66) Old War-Dreams (1865-66) Chanting the Square Deific (1865-66) I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ (1865-66)
1867: One's Self I Sing The Runner When I Read the Book
1871: Passage to India Proud Music of the Storm A Noiseless Patient Spider The Last Invocation On the Beach at Night Sparkles from the Wheel Gods Joy, Shipmate, Joy! Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
1872: The Mystic Trumpeter
1876: Prayer of Columbus To a Locomotive in Winter The Ox-Tamer
1881: The Dalliance of the Eagles A Clear Midnight
1888: As I Sit Writing Here Broadway
1891: Unseen Buds Good-bye My Fancy!
PROSE WRITINGS "The Child's Champion" Prefaces and Afterwords from Leaves of Grass: Preface to "Leaves of Grass", 1855 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Leaves of Grass", 1856 Preface to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," 1872 Preface to the Centennial Edition of "Leaves of Grass", 1876 "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," 1888 "Democratic Vistas" From Specimen Days "Slang in America"
Suggestions for Further Reading Index of Titles and First Lines
