The Portable Walt Whitman (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Walt Whitman (Author), Michael Warner (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: December 30, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was born on Long Island and educated in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a printer's devil, journeyman compositor, itinerant schoolteacher, editor, and unofficial nurse to Northern and Southern soldiers. Michael Warner is 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Rev Sub edition (December 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142437689
• ISBN-13: 978-0142437681
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Poetry

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovingly written, compiled and edited., March 13, 2001

By 

"phrynicus" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Walt Whitman: Revised Edition (The Viking Portable Library) (Paperback)

This wonderful edition features a judicious selection of Walt Whitman's poetry and essays, edited by distinguished literary critic Mark Van Doren (who is perhaps now as well known for being the father of Ralph Fiennes' character in 'Quiz Show' as he is for his erudition).

Van Doren's preface, itself a famous piece of work, accounts for both the best and worst of Whitman's creations (Van Doren seemed to share Randall Jarrell's view that we can only appreciate the best of Whitman's poetry by acknowledging the depths of his worst work), and seeks to locate the personal Whitman within his verses. This essay alone is arguably worth the price of purchase.

What really sets this anthology apart from others like it, though, is the manner in which Van Doren takes his argument - that Whitman's work was always intimate, even though its themes were variously epical or universal - and applies it to his selection of poems. In inevitable inclusions such as 'Song of Myself', 'Mannahatta' and 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry', we see Whitman the oracular poet, bringing into his egalitarian imagination the disparate bustle and brio of nineteenth-century New York and ordering them in verse. But when we read alongisde these poems 'Ashes of Soldiers', 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', 'Native Moments' and 'Once I Pass'd through a Populous City', we begin to recognise the truth in Van Doren's thesis. Whitman's fear of death, his concern for the memories of the individual dead (as we see in 'As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods'), and his nascently homerotic fascination with his own body (he writes in 'As Adam Early in the Morning', 'Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,/ Be not afraid of my body'), complement those aspects of his poetry for which he is perhaps most famous: his mythical imagination, exclamatory verse, and descriptive catalogues of local people and places, which remind me of Homeric battle lists, except that they are predicated upon peace, not war.

Combined with his eloquent prose accounts of his activities as a nurse during the Civil War, his letters, and his thoughtful, incisive tributes to those he recognised as great poets (his critical work occasionally resembles the scrupulous excellence of Samuel Johnson), Whitman's poetry discloses subtle resonances that readers might otherwise be inclined to overlook, or forget. Long-time admirers of Whitman will be overjoyed by this classic edition of his work. Those who haven't yet experienced the joys of his language could do worse than look here for a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Natural Poetry, August 3, 2000

By 

A. H. Henriksen (Newark, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Portable Walt Whitman: Revised Edition (The Viking Portable Library) (Paperback)

Not having read the entire book yet, I am not eligible for evaluating it as a whole. However, the poems that I have read amaze me and they are the reason why I call Whitman my favourite poet.

First and foremost, Whitman follows Emerson's thread of thougth in his nature-loving poetry, but Whitman allows himself fewer limits: He not only writes in free verse, he also writes explicitly about his sexuality.

His power, though, lies in his ability to take everyday things and use them in what we might call catalogue rhetoric: In a way he is just making drafts without logics. This is his way of putting everyday America into a poem. And it works. We may wonder what his point is, but Whitman is about sensation, not logics, and the feeling you experience when you read 'Song of Myself', his masterpiece, is truly unique. It is the same feeling you have when you see a beautful forest or sunset. This is poetry at its best.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Review for Kindle Edition only (not content), July 13, 2011

By 

Stella - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Portable Walt Whitman (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Edition)

Formatting is very good. However, while the linked TOC is there and enabled on the go-to menu (broken on some other Penguin editions), there is no links to individual poems. Nor are there annotated links.

This would normally be a passable edition, but if the publisher is charging a hefty $17 (the same amount as paper), then there had better be some technical jazz and other content to make it worthwhile.