Earth, My Likeness: Nature Poetry of Walt Whitman [Illustrated] [Perfect Paperback]

Walt Whitman (Author), Professor Howard Nelson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

Walt Whitman was a wild soul. His poetry expresses an earthy sensuality that was out of sync with the expanding industrialization all around him. His love of wild nature and the sensual experiences of life are felt in his every poem. This carefully selected collection, alongside the beauty of Roderick MacIver's watercolor art, creates a grand tribute to this sensitive soul.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Generations of readers have turned to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass for its nature poetry. Now Howard Nelson has given us, in one slim volume, the best of Whitman’s nature writing. Nelson’s superb selection includes prose and poetry, both soaring rhetoric (‘I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars’) and a quietly delightful diary entry about an ‘Adamic air-bath’ on the banks of Timber Creek. Rod MacIver’s fresh, deft watercolors are a perfect match for Whitman’s ‘spontaneous me.’” 
—Michael Robertson, author of Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Walt Whitman, generally considered the most important American poet of the nineteenth century, was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, and died in 1892 at age 72. Editor Howard Nelson is a professor of English at Cayuga Community College and has been awarded Chancellor’s Awards from the State University of New York for teaching, scholarship, and creative activities. A widely published poet, he has also written several criticisms of American poetry, including Robert Bly: An Introduction to the Poetry and On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell: The Wages of Dying. A contributing editor to The Hollins Critic and a contributor to the Walt Whitman Encyclopedia and The Walt Whitman Companion, Nelson reads his poetry and lectures on Whitman and other American writers regularly. He lives in Moravia, NY. Artist Roderick MacIver lives in the Adirondack Mountains, NY. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Heron Dance Art Studio (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933937025
• ISBN-13: 978-1933937021
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,122,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, near Huntington, Long Island, New York. On July 4, 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the volume of poems that for the next four decades would become his lifes work, was placed on sale. Although some critics treated the volume as a joke and others were outraged by its unprecedented mixture of mysticism and earthiness, the book attracted the attention of some of the finest literary intelligences. His poetry slowly achieved a wide readership in America and in England, where he was praised by Swinburne and Tennyson. (D. H. Lawrence later referred to Whitman as the"greatest modern poet, and"the greatest of Americans. Whitman suffered a stroke in 1873 and was forced to retire to Camden, New Jersey, where he would spend the last twenty years of his life. There he continued to write poetry, and in 1881 the seventh edition of Leaves of Grass was published to generally favorable reviews. However, the book was soon banned in Boston on the grounds that it was obscene literature. In January 1892 the final edition of Leaves of Grass appeared on sale, and Whitman's life work was complete. He died two months later on the evening of March 26, 1892, and was buried four days afterward at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.