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Examines the life of the American poet and presents some of his poems. ... Read more

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Historic Edition
In 1860, when the United States was on the brink of civil war, Walt Whitman produced a book of poems that he hoped would provide a roadmap for preserving the Union.It was "Leaves of Grass," the third edition.

Reading Whitman is always an exhilarating experience but when reading from this facsimile edition put out by the University of Iowa Press, there's a touch of something else - a sense of history.The introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy does an excellent job of situating the collection within its historical framework, showing clearly the issues that Whitman was trying to address and how he proposed to do so.

One of Whitman's central ideas for preserving the Union was fervent brotherhood as portrayed in "Calamus," a poem regarding love between men but which gains a deeper political meaning in the 1860 edition:

"States!
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper?Or by arms? . . .

There shall from me be a new friendship - It shall
be called after my name,
It shall circulate through the States, indifferent of
place . . .
Affection shall solve every one of the problems of
freedom,
Those who love each other shall be invincible,
They shall finally make America completely
victorious, in my name.
One from Massachusettes shall be comrade to a Missourian,
One from Main or Vermont, and a Carolinian and
an Orgonese, shall be friends triune, more precious
to each other than all the riches of the earth."

Stacy also points out that Whitman - who numbered the stanzas in the 1860 edition as if they were Bible verses - believed that a new humanistic religion would save the Union and he was establishing himself as its prophet: "I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion."In the same poem - "Proto-Leaf" - in which this poet-prophet sets the tone and purpose of the entire collection, he (nearly) sings:

"I will make a song for These States, that no one
State may under any circumstances be subjected
to another State.
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by
day and by night between all The States, and
between any two of them.
And I will make a song of the organic bargains of
These States - And a shrill song of curses on
him who would dissever the Union . . ."

The entire collection isn't all so explicitly focused on its times as are the quotes mentioned above but its poems - some reworked from the previous two editions and 146 new to the third (and unfortunately this is not itemized clearly in the introduction) -- were geared towards saving the Union, whether in a subtle or a direct way.And apart from the collection's mission (and it's occasionally strident poetry), some Whitman scholars believe that the third edition is the best: a general improvement over what came before and superior to those editions that followed.

Although the third "Leaves" was a critical success, 19th century America obviously didn't have the patience to listen to Whitman's song long enough to find its national salvation.But with the new facsimile edition, it is possible to hold in one's hands a collection of poems, exactly it appeared 150 years ago, written by a patriotic poet who believed in his ideas so fervently that he thought they could prevent a war.

Whitman Leaves of Grass
I've always heard references to his poetry so I decided to check it out.What a dude. No wonder people are nuts about this guy.

A Wonder To Behold
Referred to as "The New Bible" I prescribe to all who are
interested in the evolution of the written word, the human Spirit
and Walt Whitman to pore over this book, and, to see it, and read it
as it was created by the man himself - then decide if you too will become
a disciple.
I also recommendWalt Whitman and the Civil War: America's Poet during the Lost Years of 1860-1862
... Read more

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Walt Whitman is one of the most innovative and influential American poets of the nineteenth century. Focusing on his masterpiece Leaves of Grass, this book provides a foundation for the study of Whitman as an experimental poet, a radical democrat, and a historical personality in the era of the American Civil War, the growth of the great cities, and the westward expansion of the United States. Always a controversial and important figure, Whitman continues to attract the admiration of poets, artists, critics, political activists, and readers around the world. Those studying his work for the first time will find this an invaluable book. Alongside close readings of the major texts, chapters on Whitman's biography, the history and culture of his time, and the critical reception of his work provide a comprehensive understanding of Whitman and of how he has become such a central figure in the American literary canon. ... Read more

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This Halcyon Classics ebook contains more than 400 poems by American poet, writer, and journalist Walt Whitman.Whitman (1819-1892) continues to be one of the most influential American poets.He was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works.His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection LEAVES OF GRASS (included in this ebook), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.The tone and content of many of the poems in LEAVES OF GRASS has led to much speculation about Whitman's sexual orientation.This collection also includes poems from Whitman's PATRIOTIC POEMS.

Among the poems in LEAVES OF GRASS are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinatedPresident Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

This ebook is DRM free and has an active table of contents for easy navigation.
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Here is the timeless masterpiece of American poetry by one of America's greatest poets: Walt Whitman.

Read this edition of Leaves of Grass, specially formatted for your Kindle (including active table of contents), anywhere you go. ... Read more

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Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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Whitman's New Religion
Steven B. Herrmann, PhD, MFT
Author of "Walt Whitman: Shamanism, Spiritual Democracy, and the World Soul"

As Michael Robertson points out in his wonderful Introduction to "Worshiping Walt" the Whitman disciples, who consisted of a large, diverse, international group of poets, scholars, and writers--William O'Connor, John Burroughs, Anne Gilchrist, Richard Maurice Bucke, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, J. W. Wallace, and Horace Traubel-- insisted that the essential unity of "Leaves of Grass" has to be taken as a whole (5).To all of the disciples who knew Whitman personally his presence appears to have been spell-binding.Many spoke of his personal magnetism, his powerful force as a religious teacher and prophet, and more than a few compared him to Christ, or the Messiah."Why did the disciples think that Whitmanism might become an organized religion, possibly rivaling Christianity?" (9) asks Robertson.His answer is that it has to do with the nineteenth-century "crisis of faith" with which the West was wrestling, following the shocks that were delivered, in successive blows, to Judeo-Christian belief by the spiritual liberalism of Emersonian Transcendentalism (10).The comparisons with Christ are not without a basis in Whitman's own writing, as he identified with the Crucified Christ at the beginning of his oeuvre in 1847, following his bout with the "Fierce Wrestler!""I remember my crucifixion and bloody coronation / ... I remember the mockers and buffeting insults / I am alive in New York and San Francisco, / Again I tread the streets after two thousand years / ... I can easily build as good, and so can you" (NUPM, 1: 78, 79)."Really," Whitman wrote in the early 1860's, "what has America to do with all this mummery of prayer and rituals and the rant of exhorters and priests?" (NUPM, 6: 2095)For any perceptive reader of Whitman the aim of his work was indisputably religious.Robertson cuts to the chase and exposes Whitman's mission like few other scholars, as when he quotes Whitman saying in "Democratic Vistas" that both "individualism" and "adhesiveness" are part of his religious vision: "Both [individualism and adhesiveness]" says Whitman, "are to be vitalized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of man and State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath of life.For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the religious element" (21).

Whitman solved the problem of religion, Robertson says, by replacing priests with poets (21).Despite the tendency of the disciples to Christianize Walt, holding him up as a God, or turning him into a second Christ, Robertson keeps a level head and sticks with the facts about the poet, which for the most part proves his modesty.Robertson shows how Whitman discouraged his disciples from projecting the God-image onto him by revealing his ordinariness, one who had achieved divinization amongst the many, but who resisted the temptation to spiritual power, celebrating the Divine in all people.Clearly the disciples went overboard in their adulations of Whitman, and Whitman was quick to point out his criticisms.Bucke, for instance portrayed Whitman in 1883 as "the Savior, the Redeemer of the modern world" (115), and he was ridiculed later in a private conversation with Horace Traubel, where Walt complained: "What I quarrel with is the Doctor's damned definiteness--and it is very damned! ... I, the author, am in constant doubt about it" (119).Despite these misgivings about his disciple's tendency to deify him, Whitman asserted: "it is my dream to devote the rest of my life... to the study and promulgation of the new religion" (122).

One of Robertson's best chapter's concerns the question of same-sex passion, where he says that the prominent question in Whitman scholarship, in the 1970's was: "was Walt Whitman gay?"(140).The entire book, up to this point, reads seamlessly and this chapter is certainly no exception, and the chapter on Horace Traubel reads better than a good novel.There are quotes that are new to me, such as the following jewel: "It is queer how the whole world is crazy with the notion that one book, one ism... is to save things" (252).Whitman had his doubts that Leaves of Grass, the Bible, the Upanishads, Koran, or any other spiritual text, could save the world.

I finished Robertson's book wondering whether it might be high time for the field of Whitman scholarship to offer an answer to what Whitman actually meant by the "new religion."Robertson is to be congratulated for breaking new ground.He cites the reasons for the suppression of the deification of Whitman following the publication of an important biography on the poet in 1906, a book that became problematic to Whitman's disciples and shifted the focus to his poetry.

It is clear from historical documents that some of the early disciples tried to make a Messiah out of him, because they failed to read the message of his "New Bible" correctly.Today, even while we can only be grateful to the disciples for advancing Whitman's poetic project and religious vision, any enlightened reader must part company with the mistaken notion of discipleship.

Disciples is an Accurate Term
There seems to be no other word to describe the coterie that formed around Walt Whitman.The devotees were more than fans, they saw Whitman as a prophet, and framed his impact in terms usually reserved for religion.Each feels their life was totally changed by having read Whitman.I had not thought of his prose as it compares to the content and sound of the Psalms, but the disciples have a point.

Writing in the exact middle of the Victorian era, his words were surely a tonic to those tired of the prudishness of the times. Whitman gave those surrounded by a culture of guilt and shame permission to be natural, free and have some self-esteem.For some, this may have been their first exposure to ideas we take for granted today.

Whitman, who must have had enormous charisma, is portrayed as aloof from all this adoration.He is slow to answer mail.He does not encourage visits, but once the visitors come, he develops deep friendships.Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright who developed discipleship into a business Fellowship, The: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship Whitman asks nothing of these worshippers.

This is a fascinating little volume.Well placed photos help to tell the story.It is not only the story of these disciples, but also a story of the times.The people profiled are not exactly average, but they are not the heroes in the history books.Through their profiles we also learn something of everyday life of the time.

Whitman as Prophet
Robertson, Michael. "Worshipping Walt", Princeton University Press, 2008.

Whitman as Prophet

Amos Lassen

Walt Whitman holds a special place in history but an even more special place in gay history as one of the first men we speak about when we mention some of the gay "greats". He dealt with a great many issues--poverty, religion, radical reform and gay rights and he did so at a time when others were silent. Many of his friends (his disciples) regarded him as a prophet and when reading "Worshipping Walt", it is easy to see why. Whitman had a group of followers who filled diaries, wrote memoirs and left behind letters and they tell us a great deal about Whitman.
Before the modern age, i.e. the twentieth century, there was a tradition of the poet as seer and prophet and poetry was often regarded as a form of religion. This probably came from the exquisite poetry of the Old Testament which is replete not just with beautiful songs but poetic utterances from the prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. The notion of poet/prophet still lives today in the non-Western world where both the poet and his poetry are revered. In fact, no less than 150 years ago, Americans and British looked at creativity as a gift from G-d and the writer was regarded as divinely inspired. William Blake, for example, received this kind of reverence and in America, Whitman was often thought of as the man who received Blake's crown.
Whitman wrote during a period of ferment that was both religious and intellectual; a period of political turmoil (c. 1855). Science at the time was undermining the orthodoxy of Christianity, democracy was being debated in light of the new anti-slavery movement and there were several new religious movements afoot--Theosophy, Spiritualism and Mormonism. Whitman gave us a romantic and religious world outlook in "Leaves of Grass" while providing a look at transcendentalism. Evolution theories provided new thought about the sciences of biology, astronomy and geology and Protestant thinking was filled with ideas of the new millennium and perfectionism. All of this and more influenced Whitman and he used these trends in a general sense and as the setting for his own religion which was "post-Christian". Some even maintain that "Leaves of Grass" shows evidence of Whitman's writing of a new bible.
Whitman seemed to see himself as both a prophet and founder of a new American religion. When he came across Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson's reaction to and praise for "Leaves of Grass"; this gave the poet the necessary encouragement to continue as a prophet and an entry in Whitman's notebook is "Leaves of Grass--Bible of the New Religion". "Leaves of Grass" most definitely shows Whitman's intent on writing the new American bible. There is little doubt that Whitman considered himself to be a prophet and that to him, "Leaves of Grass" was scripture. There was a bit of a problem though. Whitman had written for the working classes and considered himself a hero to them. They accepted what he wrote but most of the admiration for him came from the literate readers of the lower-upper and the middle classes. There were, according to Robertson, nine extremely articulate writers who wrote publicly and privately on Whitman and who left behind a body of work that helps explain the spiritual and religious impact of "The Leaves of Grass". These men are what we shall call the disciples.
Each of the disciples found "Leaves of Grass" to be both a life-altering and profound experience. Each disciple also represents different responses to the poem, some of which are an understanding of nature a celebration of sexuality and the advocacy of a radical democracy and equality. Each of the disciples held a strong will to be near Whitman and to draw spirituality from him. They all spent time with him and took from him what he said. This group included Anne Gilchrist, J.W. Wallace, William O'Connor (these while significant in their own right have passed into obscurity), John Burroughs, Horace Traubel, Edward Carpenter, John Addington Symonds and Oscar Wilde. They all used the primary speech available to them which came from the speech of Christianity. What else they agreed upon was that "Leaves" was first a gospel and secondly a poem. One of the main draws to Whitman was the sanctity and sanctification of love between men. Together with that was the religious vision of the divine.
After the generation of disciples was gone, readers and critics who looked at Whitman as a poet replaced them. What was not there was the spiritual connection of Whitman as prophet. They helped to spread his fame, so much so that when he died in 1892, he was the best known poet in both America and Britain. Today there has been a resurgence of those who look to Whitman as a spiritual guide and to "Leaves of Grass" as a place from which many begin their quest for spirituality.

A turning point for the field
This is an innovative group portrait of Whitman's impassioned "disciples" (there is really no other word for them). It is restricted in scope to familiar figures who left us "copious letters and diaries and memoirs. . . All the disciples in this book are writers." Unfortunately, important allies who have gone begging in the existing Whitman biographies continue to go begging here--for example, Walt's right-hand man, Henry Clapp. With keen insight and a dedication to historical nuance, Robertson reassembles these ensemble actors against a freshly delineated backdrop. I must say, I learned something new and deeply satisfying in every chapter.

The key to the author's clarity is a willingness to avoid equivocation and to make concise assertions. That he succeeds for page after page is a measure of his uncommonly good judgment, and indeed, for the most part, the book runs like a well-kept engine firing on all cylinders. But the risk of being concise is to be reductionist. Take the treatment of spiritualism on page 10: "Unlike Spiritualism or Theosophy, Whitman's verse rejected all forms of supernaturalism, offering instead a pantheistic affirmation of the sacredness of the everyday." Obviously Robertson is essentially right about Walt's staunch insistence on the sacredness of the everyday. But Leaves of Grass was also a love letter to his potential allies in the abolitionist, free love, and suffragist movements, crafted to appeal to their spiritualist yearnings. One cannot succeed by seizing only one horn of the dilemma; we are constantly called to respond to Walt's own insistence that he contained contradictory multitudes.

Indeed, scholars in this field need to resist a rush to declare, "But Whitman was never X." Over the years, the various values of "X" have included "gay," "a Quaker," "a free lover," "a Bowery b'hoy," "a reformer," and, amazingly enough, even "a transcendentalist." On page 186, Robertson asserts that Whitman "steered clear of the American 'free love' movement." This may well have been true in 1889, but Whitman's famous Boston Commons debate with Emerson in 1860 can only be understood as Whitman's decision to throw his lot in with the antebellum Free Love movement--over the objections of his "Master."

Whitman's latter-day denunciations of the Free Love and Spiritualist movements are properly viewed as one among countless instances of his circle's deliberate historical revisionism. As shown by Ann Braude in Radical Spirits, the same kind of historical revisionism was simultaneously being conducted by that one historical figure whom I believe Whitman most resembles--the lesbian Quaker human-rights champion, Susan B. Anthony.

The ultimate test of the book is whether Robertson can fully portray the intense passion of these disciples without committing character assassination. (Even Walt was regularly, and deeply, embarrassed by Richard Maurice Bucke's view of the reformer-poet as a cosmic messiah.) This can be done, as shown by Artem Lozynsky in 1977; likewise, Worshipping Walt shows Robertson to have that singular degree of empathy and sophistication needed to do justice to this history.

What could possibly be more gripping than the mixture of eroticism, mysticism, scandal, faith, and ardent activism which characterized the nineteenth-century Whitman movement--heady passions which still motivate Whitman's partisans today, as Robertson shows. (In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is one of those mentioned as the modern equivalent of the "Whitmaniacs.")

The breathtaking climax of Worshipping Walt is actually tucked away as something of a throwaway in the middle of the chapter on Horace Traubel. Traubel, the bookish boy who grew to be Walt's principal torch-bearer, spent part of his life writing bad poetry. But his entire wrongheaded poetic career was redeemed by the single impassioned prayer-poem he wrote the day Walt died. It may be a minor criticism, but I regret that Robertson did not reserve this ecstatic utterance as his book's spectacular valedictory.

I view Worshipping Walt as a welcome turning point for the entire field--I see it as just that vital. Whether your interest is in the power of poetry, American Studies, the sociology of religion, radical reform, gay history, or Walt Whitman himself, start here; you'll be rewarded. ... Read more

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A poem by Whitman may be whoops and hollers, or beating of drums, or the ebb of the tide singing to itself among the stones, or laments in the night or cries of ecstasy. Indeed, Whitman was the wind which blew poetry from its moorings in tradition and sent it into fresher waters; his poems celebrating the grandness of the human condition are cadenced for the voice and meant to be spoken aloud. In this recording drawn from the Caedmon archives, reader Ed Begley, Sr. performs selections from Whitman's lifelong work, Leaves of Grass.

Customer Reviews (6)

Unforgettable
Over thirty years ago I heard this recording of Ed Begley reading Whitman's OUT OF THE CRADLE ENLESSLY ROCKING. I never forgot the experience.I was in an English class and there was not a soul in the room that was visibly moved.I have all but committed this very long poem to memory but do not believe anyone has ever read it with as much gentility and grace as Begley,and have come to believe that no one ever could read Whitman's word with such an overwhelming empathy that is never maudlin nor 'dramatic'in the worse sense of the word but direct, pure, unmuddied, strong. In the intervening years, i have sifted through stacks in old record stores, public libraries and yard sales, searched through the internet and askeed English professors but did not find this recording available until now.It is the best recording of spoken poetry I have ever heard (and I've heard alot) and Begley was never better. It awoke me to poetry in a way I cannot describe but only gesticulate mutely in an attempt to say Listen to this!

An Essential Whitman Experience
I first heard Ed Begley, Sr. reading--no, inhabiting--Whitman's robust poems more than 40 years ago, and the aural memory stayed with me all these years. Finally I tracked down the recording, and have found all my youthful judgment vindicated. It'san illuminating performance by a great actor of yesteryear.

Begley Is Superb
Whitman is not my favorite poet by a stretch, but listening to Ed Begley Sr. recite it could change that over time. The excerpts are copious and well chosen; the excerpts from "A Song of Myself," intelligent. Begley's voice and delivery--warm, rich, never strained or histrionic--is a perfect match for the verse. Highly recommended.

The finest reader of Whitman!
Ed Begley is quite simply the finest Whitman reader available.(If you Google "Mickle street review" you'll have access to Scourby and O' Herlihy and Orson Wells who also read Whitman quite well.)
Begley's reading of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is a deeply moving experience--one I return to frequently.His performance of section 8 of "TheSleepers" captures the haunting nature of this strange and lyrical poem perfectly.
I find that Begley's voice is--ironically--too mature for some of the more youthful passages from "Song of Myself" (although the passage "28 young men..." is read superbly).On the other hand, his readings of "Drum Taps" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"have just the right balance of toughness, tenderness, and maturity.
This is a great introduction to some of Whitman's best work.

Whitman collecter
This cd is a must for any fan or general reader of old Uncle Walt (as Robin Williams would say in Dead poets society, by Peter Weir.)

Its beautifully recorded and is easy to get into as Walt was always intended to be listened to rather than read. I recommend home private listening with preferebly a Bose wave system cd player or at least with a fine set of headphones...Enjoy, (plus its a bargain too !!!)
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From one of America's best loved and most important poets comes a masterpiece. Leaves of Grass is considered by many to be the greatest collection of poetry ever produced by an American. And this, the 1855 First Edition Text, is considered the strongest and most important of the many editions produced throughout Whitman's life. Here Whitman is at the height of his writing prowess, and no other edition would match it for strength and impact. "The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." - Ralph Waldo Emerson ... Read more

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Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself is the first full-length critical biography of Walt Whitman in more than forty years. Jerome Loving makes use of recently unearthed archival evidence and newspaper writings to present the most accurate, complete, and complex portrait of the poet to date. This authoritative biography affords fresh, often revelatory insights into many aspects of the poet's life, including his attitudes toward the emerging urban life of America, his relationships with his family members, his developing notions of male-male love, his attitudes toward the vexed issue of race, and his insistence on the union of American states. Virtually every chapter presents material that was previously unknown or unavailable, and Whitman emerges as never before, in all his complexity as a corporal, cerebral, and spiritual being. Loving gives us a new Poet of Democracy, one for the twenty-first century.
Loving brings to life the elusive early Whitman, detailing his unhappy teaching career, typesetting jobs, quarrels with editors, and relationships with family and friends. He takes us through the Civil War--with Whitman's moving descriptions of the wounded and dying he nursed, the battlegrounds and camps he visited--demonstrating why the war became one of the defining events of Whitman's life and poetry. Loving's account of Whitman's relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most complete and fascinating available. He also draws insights from new material about Whitman's life as a civil servant, his Lincoln lectures, and his abiding campaign to gain acceptance for what was regarded by many as a "dirty book." He examines each edition of Leaves of Grass in connection with the life and times that produced it, demonstrating how Whitman's poetry serves as a priceless historical document--marking such events as Grant's death, the completion of the Washington monument, Custer's defeat, and the Johnstown flood--at the same time that it reshapes the canon of American literature.
The most important gap in the Whitman record is his journalism, which has never been completely collected and edited. Previous biographers have depended on a very incomplete and inaccurate collection. Loving has found long-forgotten runs of the newspapers Whitman worked on and has gathered the largest collection of his journalism to date. He uses these pieces to significantly enhance our understanding of where Whitman stood in the political and ideological spectra of his era.
Loving tracks down the sources of anecdotes about Whitman, how they got passed from one biographer to another, were embellished and re-contextualized. The result is a biography in which nothing is claimed without a basis in the factual record. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself will be an invaluable tool for generations to come, an essential resource in understanding Leaves of Grass and its poet--who defied literary decorum, withstood condemnation, and stubbornly pursued his own way.Amazon.com Review
Despite the general resistance to his work on the part of hisliterary contemporaries, and their disapproval of his homoeroticism,Walt Whitman experienced incredible success during his lifetime. Afterthe 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass(the first of nine editions of the book he personally saw through thepress), he fast became America's national poet. He was asked to writepoems commemorating the victims of natural disasters and was offered afree burial plot in exchange for a poem lauding the cemetery'sbeauty. Millionaire Andrew Carnegie was one of his vigoroussupporters.

Whitman's success is most likely the result of the approachability--hewrote often of the immediate: the sounds of the city, men bathing inthe river, the mystery around the next corner--and sheer beauty of hispoems. He was also an expert self-promoter. Long before the advent ofthe blurb in contemporary publishing, Whitman would include reviews ofhis books in the appendices. Many of these were actually written byhim and a few were even critical, in order to maintain a sense ofobjectivity. He carefully controlled his public image, but assiduouslyguarded his private realm, which is why, more than a century after thepoet's death, debate still rages about his sexual proclivity--theresimply isn't enough proof one way or another. The Song ofHimself, the first comprehensive biography of Whitman in 20years, is rich with details of its subject's life and times and cogentanalysis of his poetry--a book that is sure to increase readers'understanding of the great poet and reinvigorate their interest in hiswork. --Anna Baldwin ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

From a Former Student
I took a Whitman seminar from Dr. Loving, and this was our textbook.It is very dy, and very full of detail.I love Whitman's work, and reading this biography really helped me understand more about it.

The good gray poet of Camden
The poet died in 1892.In life he became notorious and a positive influence on the reformers of the day.The author states he supplied the model for the count in Bram Stoker's DRACULA.The first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS was 1855, the last 1881.Whitman was not as solitary as previously assumed.For the poet the Civil Warbecame a marriage ceremony of sorts.At forty three Whitman was too old for the rigors of combat.In 1862 Whitman went to the front in search of his brother George.Subsequently traveling to Washington D.C. he began his career as a wound dresser.Whitman immersed himself in the pathos of the terrible struggle.

Whitman's capacity to love was the dynamo of LEAVES OF GRASS.He was a former printer, second son in the family.Whitman's ancestry was essentially Dutch and English.He concluded his formal schooling at age eleven.Between 1836 and 1841 Whitman taught at eight district schools on Long Island.By 1855 Whitman had read Emerson.In 1840 he made the prophetic announcement that he was thinking of writing a book.The tone of Whitman's early writings is moralistic.Whitman wrote a temperance novel entitled FRANKLIN EVANS.

Whitman was a privte poet who made public his boundless affection for the one in the many.Whitman was no New England reformer.His utopia was not an agrarian retreat.In the 1840's Whitman dressed in a conventional way.Whitman loved Indian names and thought the nation was losing something through its policy of Indian removal.At the same time he had Darwainian confidence that the Indians faced extinction.Whitman was appalled by capital punishment.He saw the matter within the context of the haves and the nave-nots.

The Bible was an influence later on his poetry.Whitman was editor of the BROOKLYN EAGLE 1846-1848.Whitman saw slavery as a social evil.He never became an abolitionist in a political or formal sense.Whitman lost his job and traveled south to New Orleans.He worked at the CRESCENT but later separated from that publication possibly by mutual agreement.His favorite poet was William Cullen Bryant.It may have occurred to him at this time that he was wearing out his opportunities in journalism.Travel beyond Long Island and New York City had fed his imagination at least.

Whitmam, a product of "charity schooling", was socially and economically different from Emerson and others.Whitman was involved in Free-Soil politics.He became the editor of the FREEMAN.As the paper adopted a softer tone, Whitman was pushed out of the editorial office.LEAVES OF GRASS began to take shape in his mind in the 1850's.Parallels abound between Emerson's first two collections of essays and Whitman's first three editions of LEAVES OF GRASS.Whitman was interested in problems of democracy and the development of genius.He probably heard or knew of Emerson's address "Natural Aristocracy."Whitman was awash in romantic ideas about art and the artist.

Whitman's favorite composers of opera were Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi.Italian opera emphasized the human voice over the orchestration.It is because of Italian opera that LEAVES OF GRASS may be read aloud.BEL CANTO sent Whitman into moments of rapture.LEAVES OF GRASS is a solitary act.The terms leaves and grass are printer's lingo.The use of leaves in a book title was common.Whitman felt that the genius in the United States was always in the common people.Emerson wrote that famous letter on July 21, 1855 greeting Whitman "at the beginning of a great career."

Whitman blurred the difference between poetry and prose. Whitman took the single line as the rhythmical unit.James Russell Lowell supported Whitman's poetry with reservations.Richard Moncton Milnes was a notable English supporter.Alcott left a full account of a visit with Whitman in 1856.Emerson thought the poet should use self-censorship on his Children of Adam poems for the 1860 edition.The only contemporary response to homosexuality and the Calamus poems was a letter of the English critic John Aldington Symonds in 1890.William Dean Howells and Henry James did not like the poetry in DRUM TAPS or any of the other offerings of Whitman.William Rossetti arranged for an English edition of LEAVES OF GRASS.

Whitman was a commencement speaker at Dartmouth in 1872.In the 1870's he moved to Camden and suffered the first stroke.Ill health did not prevent him from being productive in later life.His last essay treated Elias Hicks, a Quaker artist, who had been an influence on his work.This critical biography is excellent.

Most comprehensive, and least theory-ridden Whitman Bio.
In this latest biography of quite possibly the most important American poet, Jerome Loving takes on a Herculean labor: to present the facts about a man who endeavored to create himself as an icon, and who has been taken up by a dozen causes and ideologies as one of their own (some have regarded Whitman as a religious figure on par with Christ, a homosexual liberator, or a proto-communist).The result of a great deal of combining and comparing, winnowing opinion, propaganda, and rumor, is a cautious, complex, and detailed view of the facts of Whitman's life.

On the issues currently 'hot' in debate about the poet (his homosexuality or lack thereof, his attitudes towards immigrants, women, and African-Americans), Loving doesn't succumb to the temptation to either sanctify his subject or make him simply a partisan of the current opinions, but rather weighs and presents the evidence in as close to an impartial manner as I've seen.The lack of a simplistic, overarching narrative to Loving's life of Whitman (the kind of narrative found in many other bios) is true to the facts of life and scholarship--sometimes we can't know. I've found this book scrupulously up-to-date; it corrects many factual errors found in earlier Whitman bios.It is required reading for any Whitman scholar, and a good read as well for those interested in knowing more about the Good Grey Poet than his poems tell us by themselves.

"I felt as if I was by the poets side each and every moment.
After reading Loving's book on Whitman it only enhanced my spirit to read and analyze more of this Poet's life and poetry.I decieded to write about Whitman in my class at college and used Loving's book as a research meanstogether with other books form the university library. I feel as if I knowmore about good "Old Walt" then I do my own family.This wastruly a good read.Enjoy!!!

Life detailed more than revealed
As a probably a-typical reader (I've not read Whitman's poems very thoroughly or very recently), I was nonetheless very interested to read about his life in incredible detail. Loving chronicles Whitman's movementsto and fro - professionally, geographically, and artistically. His abilityto deliver the flavor of the era via exposition of the political and socialissues is quite good, however, at the "juiciest" of moments yousometimes feel disappointed. For example, there is quite a bit writtenabout Whitman's Free Soil politics vs. abolistionist and how thatultimately destroys his friendship with his stalwart supporter O'Connor.The information is conveyed -- but I feel that I am missing some of thepassion -- of their relationship to begin with -- and then of the heatedargument they reportedly had. Perhaps this information was unavailable.

I could conclude that Loving did not wish to guess -- but on severaloccasions in the book he speculates freely and without tons of support. Iguess I would have prefered more freedom to speculate by the scholar.

Still - if the reader is seeking a landscape upon which to speculate thisshould indeed be ample. ... Read more

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Family Ties

What stuck me most was the closeness of the Whitman Family.They live together sharing cramped quarters, business problems and paychecks. Louisa Van Veldor Whitman keeps the home fires burning as her children go off into the world, always writing them letters and welcoming them home.The title gives her short shrift, but she is as central to this story as the brothers.

The author, Robert Roper, doesn't say much about Walt's political view of the war, his feelings about slavery or secession. For this, I recommend Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography which shows Walt as a staunch defender of the Union and someone who accepted of slavery since aboloshing it would tear the Union apart. George is the family's contribution to preserving the Union, Walt is too old to fight, brother Jess is unable and brother Jeff pays for a substitute.

This family is has deep emotional ties and supports itself communally. Walt is the first son to take on the family construction business and seems to do better at it than his father before him. George becomes the family's economic mainstay, joining it to and solidifying it in the middle class. As a union officer he earns $105/month at a time when a serviceable house can cost as low as $400.Union privates earned $13/month, and brother Jeff gets $40 for his work at the NYC waterworks.

Walt's famous hospital volunteerism grows out of his family ties. When George is injured Walt visits him and sees the suffering of the wounded. During the war, Walt is in and out of the family home, but life there goes on, seemingly as usual, a bit relieved of financial stress via George's paycheck. Towards the end of the war, George is captured and the family uses all its resources to find and free him.

Walt's famous work in the hospitals takes on a whole new light when Roper views it through a lens of homosexuality.Roper takes letters, texts and poetry of the time to illustrate this different perspective on Walt's service. He handles this content well, and in no way diminishes the difficult work of visiting the wounded in hospitals filled with trauma, unsanitary conditions, stench and general misery that the average person would rather not think about, let alone see.

While most of the book was good, towards the end it became a chore to finish. I'm not sure why, but there seems to be more and longer quotes from poems and review sources towards the end.For that I held back a star.

The Biography of A Family
"Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official surface courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession war; and it is best they should not--the real war will never get in the books." - Walt Whitman, "Specimen Days"

A bibliography of all the books written about the American Civil War since its opening shots fired at Fort Sumter, would easily number in the hundreds of thousands.The Civil War is, by far and away, the most written about topic in American History, and though many have tried, with greater or lesser success, no one, not even those who lived through those four battle bloodied years, has been able to capture the horror of the "real war" in print as it was truly experienced by those who participated in it.

Robert Roper, in his book, "Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and his Brothers in the Civil War," has pointedly circumnavigated Whitman's challenge to future historians by not writing a book specifically about the war.Rather than offering his readers a history of the Civil War, he has instead offered up a not only biography of Walt Whitman, but a biography of the whole Whitman family.

Walt Whitman came from a large, working-class family of Long Island, New York.He was the second of nine children born to Walter and Louisa (Van Velsor) Whitman, eight of whom lived to adulthood.Like many large families, some of the Whitman siblings remained but sad shadows in the light of their more talented and successful siblings.Though Mr. Roper concentrates on the more successful members of the family - Walt, the poet; George, the soldier; and Jeff, the engineer - his narrative does not neglect the lesser known individuals of the Whitman family.Additionally, the author brings a new interpretation of Whitman's mother, Louisa (Van Velsor) Whitman, the touchstone of the family correspondence, correcting the flawed portrait of a largely illiterate matriarch painted by previous Whitman scholars.

Mr. Roper begins his narrative of the Whitman family, nearly at the beginning with the family firmly established in the working class neighborhoods of Long Island.He follows the family who were constantly on the move, from building, living in, and selling house after house until finally coming to rest, more or less permanently in Brooklyn, and the outbreak of the Civil War.

Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, George Whitman enlisted in the 13th New York Militia, a three month regiment and left for the war.After his term of service expired he enlisted as a lieutenant in the 51st New York Infantry.He eventually rose to the rank of major in that regiment, and led his men through twenty-one major battles.He was wounded at Fredericksburg.

Two hours after reading George's name listed in a casualty list in the printed in the New York Herald, Walt packed a few clothes, withdrew $50 from his mother's bank account and headed south, first to Washington, D.C. and then on to Fredericksburg, where he found his younger brother only slightly wounded by a shell fragment that had pierced his cheek.Walt's visit with his with his wounded brother would prove to be that catalyst that changed his life.

Deeply moved by what he saw and experienced at Fredericksburg Walt determined to help where ever he could.Through acquaintances in Washington he was able to find a place to stay and a part-time government job when left him plenty of time to visit the hospitals around Washington, and care for those soldiers who have born the battle.

Walt was a frequent visitor to the hospitals around Washington, making as many as 600 visits.He brought the wounded and dying soldiers small gifts of paper, pens, stamps, fruit, candy and other various items he deemed would be helpful to those he cared for.He sat beside the beds of the wounded soldiers, and talked to them of their lives at home, read them their letters from family and friends, wrote letters for them, held their hands, consoled them, and watched them die.They served as inspiration for his poetry.

Mean while, Mrs. Whitman was home in Brooklyn, receiving letters from her two sons away, George writing from various battlefields, and Walt from Washington.Louisa served as the hub of the family correspondence, all the while caring for the other members of the Whitman family left behind.

It is in the interweaving of these three stories, George at the front, Walt in the Washington hospitals, and Louisa at home that Mr. Roper has excelled.The largely concentrating his focus on these three stories the author does not fail to write about the other members of the Whitman family, most notably, Jesse, the oldest, mentally unstable and violently deranged; Jeff, chief assistant of the Brooklyn Waterworks who purchased a substitute and avoided the draft; the drunk and dying Andrew, and the feebleminded youngest sibling Edward; though less attention has been paid to the Whitman sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Hannah.Using the voluminous correspondence between the members of this large family as well as the journals and notebooks of the poet himself, the author gives his readers not a glimpse of the minutia of war, but rather the larger picture of battles and battlefields, the dead, the wounded and dying, the hospitals and the lives of those left behind.

Mr. Roper also deserves deep praise for not shying away from the topic of Walt's homosexuality.Extrapolating from the poet's notebooks and lists of names, Mr. Roper concludes that Walt had an active and open sex life.Though, he most certainly did not sleep with every one listed in his notebooks, there was enough attraction to them for Whitman to make a note of their names, and so too with the boys in his care in the Washington hospitals.

"Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and his Brothers in the Civil War," serves as an excellent companion to Whitman's poetry. A journalist, historian and fiction writer, Mr. Roper provides his readers with the information to more properly put Whitman's poetry into the context of its time; placing it against his personal life, the lives of his family and momentous events of the Civil War.

excellent companion book
This is an excellent companion book for reading Walt Whitman's poetry.It provides a context for what was going on in Walt Whitman's life as well as in society as a whole as a background for his poetry.

A Fresh Look at Whitman
This is the best book written on the Civil War in a generation.The
author has plumbed the sources (from the National Archives and
elsewhere) and come back with a story like none other, a scrupulous
history that reads with the vivid intensity of a major novel.The
descriptions of actual battles, in which George Whitman, the poet
Whitman's brother, fought, are alone worth the price of admission.
Roper is interested in many things, and one of them is the bond of
devotion that connected Walt to his six brothers.They were the sons
of a large, impoverished, severely afflicted Brooklyn family, several
of whose members were uncommonly brilliant.Roper brings the Great
Mother who presided over this clan into deep focus.Mrs. Whitman has
heretofore been known as an illiterate slum matron, churlish and
embarrassing; here, that distorted and condescending portrait
undergoes a wonderful correction.
The book is profoundly moving yet written with stoic reserve.Think
of early Hemingway; think of Stephen Crane.Whitman spent the war
years working as a nurse in the hospitals on the Union side; brother
George, meanwhile, was a line officer fighting for survival in some
of the most searing battles in our history.George's war
experiences, put into letters from the front, fed Walt's poetry, and
among other things this book is a clear-eyed reassessment of Walt's
poetic achievement.The only problem with NOW THE DRUM OF WAR is
that it eventually ends.Readers caught up in its intensely real
recreation of the Civil War and the writing of the great literature
of that war will find themselves doling out its final pages sparingly
-- to turn the last one was, in my experience, to feel bereft.

Another WW Bio?
Other reviewers have done an excellent job portraying the essence of Roper's new book, so I will keep my words to a minimum. The answer is "yes" - another biography, and yet, it's unlike any I have read thus far. It was refreshing to hear about the family relationships, especially about George and his military career, and the voluminous correspondence. The very thing that drew Walt south was, after all, George's wounding. Read alongside other authors, eg.: David Reynolds, Jerome Loving, Harold Bloom, Kenneth M. Price, Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom,Dan Campion, and Sherry Ceniza, to mention just a few - this book adds a much appreciated dimension. You do not have to be a Whitmanian to enjoy this excellent book.

- a Whitmanian in Florida, raised in Huntington
... Read more

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Written for this volume by an international team of distinguished Whitman scholars, these essays address a wide range of contemporary issues in his life and art through varying approaches.The volume includes a chronology of Whitman's life and suggestions for further reading. ... Read more

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A wonderful example of American Poetry!
This book was amazing! If you like Walt Whitman this is the book to buy! A true classic. ... Read more

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From the introduction by Galway Kinnell:

Customer Reviews (1)

Whitman via Kinnell
"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. ... Read more