Essential Whitman (Essential Poets) [Paperback]

Walt Whitman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential Poets | Publication Date: December 10, 1999

The poems of Walt Whitman meant little to me when I read them in high school and college. Lucidly, when I was teaching at the University of Grenoble in my late twenties, I was required to give a course on Whitman. My experience of Leaves of Grass then was intense.... Soon I understood that poetry could be transcendent, hymn-like, a cosmic song, and yet remain idolatrously attached to the creatures and things of our world .... Once again, as when I first began writing, it seemed it might be possible to say everything in poetry.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Song Of Myself: 26
Bivouac On A Mountain Side
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Elemental Drifts: 1
Elemental Drifts: 2
Elemental Drifts: 3
Elemental Drifts: 4
A Glimpse
The Last Invocation
Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City
Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Poem Of The Body
Poem Of The Propositions Of Nakedness
Reconciliation
The Runner
Sleep-chasings
Song Of Myself
Sparkles From The Wheel
There Was A Child Went Forth
Vigil Strange I Kept On The Field One Night
When I Heard At The Close Of The Day
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Galway Kinnell lives in Vermont and New York City. He has been the director Of an adult education program in Chicago, a journalist in Iran, and a field worker for the Congress of Racial Equality in Louisiana. During the past twenty years he has taught at colleges and universities in this country and in France and Australia. His Selected Poems, published in 1982, won the Pulitzer Prize and, with Charles Wright's Country Music, the American Book Award. His most recent book of poems is The Past. Galway Kinnell is Samuel F. B. Morse Professor of Arts and Science at New York University, where he teaches creative writing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; Subsequent edition (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880014792
• ISBN-13: 978-0880014793
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,834,030 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whitman via Kinnell, July 20, 2003

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Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Essential Whitman (Essential Poets) (Paperback)

"The Essential Whitman" consists of the poetry of Walt Whitman as selected by Galway Kinnell, who also provides an introduction. In his intro Kinnell notes that Whitman continually revised his great poetry, but not always, in Kinnell's opinion, for the better. Kinnell further notes that the versions of the poems in this book incorporate the best aspects of Whitman's many versions. He writes, "Some of the poems in this book, therefore, are in versions that have never existed before." Notes at the end of the collection show what versions were incorporated into the poems as reconstituted by Kinnell.

I'm not enough of a Whitman scholar to thoroughly critique Kinnell's technique and choices. But I do find his approach fascinating, and I enjoyed the poetry for what it is.

The poetry in this book is an expansive, passionate testament with the flavor of prophecy--the prophecy, that is, of a playful and joyous heretic. Whitman shows a compassion for and identification with all human beings, regardless of race, gender, or religion. He is a great forerunner of 20th and 21st century multiculturalism, and shows a sympathy with the suffering and the oppressed.

His vision moves from the intimacy of a blade of grass to the movement of the stars; his eye takes in all of human history and prehistory. His writing is marked by delicious irony and paradox; he is bold enough to say "let one line of my poems contradict another!" At times the poetry seems to reflect the experience of an altered state of consciousness. Whitman's "barbaric yawp" is one of the essential voices of American poetry, and Kinnell has put together a marvelous sampling of that voice.