Laws for Creations [Paperback]

Walt Whitman (Author), Michael Cunningham (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2006

In Walt Whitman, Michael Cunningham sees a poet whose vision of humanity is ecstatic, democratic, and sensuous. Just over a hundred years ago, Whitman celebrated America as it survived the Civil War, as it endured great poverty, and as it entered the Industrial Revolution, which would make it the most powerful nation on Earth. In Specimen Days Michael Cunningham makes Whitman's verse sing across time, and in Laws for Creations he celebrates what Whitman means to him, and how he appeared at the heart of his new novel.

Just as the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours drew on the life and work of English novelist Viriginia Woolf, Specimen Days lovingly features the work of American poet Walt Whitman. Bringing together extracts from Whitman's prodigious writings, including Leaves of Grass and his journal, Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham's Laws for Creations provides an introduction to one of America's greatest visionary poets from one of our greatest contemporary novelists.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the life and writing of Virginia Woolf was the inspiration for Cunningham's The Hours, Walt Whitman, is at the heart of his latest, Specimen Days: he appears as a bearded old man walking on Broadway, and his poetry is read and scrawled on the walls by characters. Cunningham now offers his own selection of Whitman's work-poetry from the first and last editions of Leaves of Grass and prose from Whitman's Specimen Days (from which Cunningham takes the title of his novel) and Collect. Cunningham calls this collection a "quirky and personal" introduction to Whitman, meant to present his sensuous and democratic celebration of the nation and its inhabitants (and to explain his significance in Cunningham's novel). Inclusion of the untitled first-published version of "Song of Myself" and Whitman's less-studied prose will interest those more familiar with his work, and Cunningham's unique presentation of Whitman's writings-both his own esoteric favorites and the poet's most famous poems-will entice newcomers.
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About the Author

Michael Cunningham is the author of the bestselling novel The Hours, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, A Home at the End of the World, also adapted for the screen, and Flesh and Blood, all published by FSG. He lives in New York.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312426070
• ISBN-13: 978-0312426071
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,970,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Fade Away, November 9, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laws for Creations (Paperback)

I don't care for the way Cunningham refers to Whitman as "Uncle Walt," taming him perhaps by domesticating him, bringing him into the family. People used to think of Walt Disney as "Uncle Walt," not that the nickname fit Disney any better than it does Whitman, but Disney evidently played up his own avuncularity because it was such good press agentry, the nickname did half his marketing for him. Does Whitman need that? Maybe so. In any case he got lucky in attracting the 2005 sponsorship of one of America's finest novelists, one with muscle enough to require his press to put out an edition of Whitman to accompany the publication of his new SPECIMEN DAYS. Now that's marketing muscle! As an anthology of Whitman's verse, it can hardly be bettered, though warning, Cunningham makes some eccentric choices, such as the title poem, "Laws for Creations," a poem to which, everything else being equal, few have probably ever given more than a glance.

However once you look at it, it has its own groove, and dances up and down the sonic chambers of the mind like Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys performing that 15 minute version of MACHINE GUN.

Cunningham's choice of prose is equally telling, with tiny, jewel like excerpts from "Specimen Days," Whitman's memoirs of nursing sick and dying men and boys during the worst hours of the Civil War. If you want your "Specimen Days" reduced, in true "Classics Illustrated" style, to a matter of ten pages, here's the way to do it. Also included, "A Backwards Glance," the essay Whitman wrote towards the very end of his life justifying his ways to God and man (and used as the preface to his final re-mix of LEAVES OF GRASS). Altogether a rewarding journey and you could put it in your hip pocket while going off to the reveilles of bivouac. "Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?/ I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,/ I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why another Whitman!, May 4, 2006

By 

William B. Jones - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laws for Creations (Paperback)

The editor gives good reasons for "Why another Whitman" in his richly textured introduction; here are mine. Whitman is available in countless editions, but many have copious notes, useful but distracting. If you want an uncluttered "reader's" selection (with a generous font-size too), this may be the one.

Most also divide "Leaves of Grass" into sections according to names Whitman gave them in later years, but which were not present in the 1855 first edition. To read the opening "I Celebrate Myself" without notes, section breaks, or line numbers (even!) is to experience it as a whole, not as a collection. A real treat.

The only caveat I have is that the paper quality seems a bit substandard. Perhaps by the time it wears out there will be an "anniversary edition" available. Otherwise, it's precisely the one I was looking for (and purchased)! Enjoy.