Whitman, Walt

Average customer rating:

The collection I always wanted
Welcome to Whitman's World
!!!EMERALD!!!
A beautiful intoduction to Whitman
Beautiful

The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
The Poetry of Robert Frost
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics)
Leaves of Grass
The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition

ASIN: 0140424512
Release Date: 2005-03-29

Book Description

In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America's most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” Whitman's art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman's known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,” edition of Leaves of Grass (1891-92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.”

Customer Reviews:

The collection I always wanted.......2007-04-05

I was turned on to "Uncle Walt," as my high school teacher described him, while taking American Literature, and am thankful for it. While Whitman has a unique style of writing, I am drawn to it and enjoy this book emensely. I definetely recommend this book to any Walt Whitman fan, and to those that appreciate American poetry.

Welcome to Whitman's World.......2006-05-15

Whitman is a special poet. As you read through his poems you get the feeling that you are not reading poetry but rather going through Whitman's mind. His compulsive style both simple and meticulous, his whirling rhythym, and his proud usage of the first person, all give you a vivid glimpse of the world through his eyes and heart; the eyes of his time and the poetic heart of his thoughts. Yet even though Whitman talks to you in social vocab. you know that you are listening to a poet because ast is ineveitable to sense his power to overwhelm. Lorca described Whitman as "viejo" and "hermoso", and these descriptions are true of Whitman the poet as Whitman the man. After reading this book you'll be short of words to describe it as I appear to be. It has too much inside it. But it is beautiful because the words inside it come from a man who knew how to appreciate and merge with the antiquity and great elderiness of the world.

!!!EMERALD!!!.......2005-06-07

not only the greatest selling poet who has been dead for more than fifty years, not only the poet whose translations are regularly read abroad, not only the poet whose name has in-spired countless others, not only the poet who freed us from the manacles of rhyme and decapitated the tyranny of meter but also a man of enthusiasm, a titan, a man whose soul floods with belch, fume and quake, a man who confronts the ravenous centaurs of humdrum and blugeons them swiftly in a spasmo of frenzy-fire, a wanderer, a searcher, one whose mind travels vig-orously throughout the cosmimosa and embellishes it with jac-inths of thought and blooms of popy! not only a man of gargan-tuan passions, one who rages in the face of metallic storm but also a man whose depressions, fogs, glooms and sensitivity to flowers, softness and the defenseless bloom in stark heart-throb. no doubt he is a poet well worth a place beside such other titano-giants such as goethe, milton and homer, for he too sings the song of war, his book is a chanson of bellum for he sings of the battle of the passions, the climaximum of the emo-ceans, he challenges the raw specters of gash, their eyes oozing of slime-drab and rather than succumb to the oxen of indiffer-ence he instead triumphs over the gray and his book thus re-sounds in shinning claria! his is an adventure of thought sur-real in its gusto, jumping in its excitica and wild in its leap of ideas! thank celestium that he liberated us poets from the ab-surd manacles of rhyme and meter and we can now surge through horiza with countless new devices, metaphors and similies awaiting in our platoons! he is the cougar of innova-tion, the lion of spasmo and the giant of vision.

kyle foley, author of Lorelei Pursued and Wrestles with God

A beautiful intoduction to Whitman.......2001-12-19

This collection of Whitman's poetry has the ulitimate selection for any reader, whether one is experienced in the composition and analyzation of Whitman or simply reading for pleasure. The book contains every known work by the author, as well as numerous editions of poems such as "Song of Myself" which was revised and reprinted by the author several times. If one is a fan of Walt Whitman, this is an excellent source of all his poetry compact into one book. If a person is just begining to experience the poet, everyting someone would want to read is at his or her fingertips.

Beautiful.......2000-07-12

The poems in this book are un-explainable by words. It dosn't matter if you don't understand it all, The poems touch you just the same. I definatley Recommend this book to poetry lovers!

Average customer rating:

What book will you get when you order this?
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman is a Great Read!!!!!
Don't Try to Read it at One Sitting
Review of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"

Leaves of Grass (Enriched Classics)
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Walden: (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau)
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Self-Reliance and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions)

ASIN: 1416523715

Book Description

Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves of Grass, he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and physiological allusions as `disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed'. A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour of the American nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.

Download Description

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many other editions of Leaves of Grass, which reproduce various short, early versions, this Modern Library Paperback Classics "Death-bed" edition presents everything Whitman wrote in its final form, and includes newly commissioned notes.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

What book will you get when you order this?.......2007-06-17

There seems to be some confusion, both in the editorial reviews and the customer reviews, about what edition is being referred to in this listing. the first editorial review correctly discusses the first edition as shorter and "less bloated" than the deathbed edition. however, the rest of the reviews seem to discuss either edition indiscriminately.

the two are effectively different books. the cover shown is of the first edition including an illuminating essay by malcolm cowley--that's certainly the edition I prefer, and I hope thats what you would get if you ordered this.

Leaves of Grass.......2007-03-19

Walt Whitman is one of the two most read poets by the American reading public. This is a classic and like Whitman, it covers every aspect of life, including his patriotism.

Walt Whitman is a Great Read!!!!!.......2007-03-09

If you love poetry, then this is a great read!!!

Don't Try to Read it at One Sitting.......2006-09-21

Whitman is not the world's greatest poet - that's probably Shakespeare - but he's certainly been the most influential American poetic voice over the past century. He was the first poet to take all of American life as his subject. Ever the Romantic, Whitman was also the first poet to bring Romanticism into line with everyday reality.

His narcissism can be annoying, but his panoramic descriptions of life and the imagination have a singularly cumulative power. Some of his short poems ("A Noiseless Patient Spider" and "To a Locomotive in Winter")are individually memorable. The longer poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," indirectly about the Lincoln assassination, is brilliant. I think most of his Civil War poems are overpraised, but "Come Up from the Fields, Father" is a masterpiece of its kind.

On the negative side, Whitman's transcendental philosophy, which he likes to indulge at length, will strike many readers as very sappy. His style, lots of details piled up on top of one another, grows monotonous, and readers who criticize his lack of traditional poetic craftsmanship cannot just be brushed off. My advice is to not to try to get through it all at once. The poems rarely become "difficult," they just tend to blur one into the other. Which may actually have been Whitman's intention.

Overall,there's never been a book quite like "Leaves of Grass," in any edition, and that's why it keeps selling as a true classic. In other words, a very old book that people still buy and read and enjoy even when no teacher is telling them to. Reading it will get you as close as one book can to actually living in nineteenth-century America, with all its follies, inequities, and promise.

Review of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass".......2006-07-06

This thick soft-backed "pocket" book has 490 pages. It could be called The Complete Whitman. It contains hundreds of poems.
I am a senior citizen who had not read any Whitman for more than 50 years and am enjoying it very much. His descriptions of the 19th century's people, places, and inventions are eye-openers. He was actually a feminist before there was such a concept, and also an abolitionist. He truly believed in equality and democracy. He was a nature lover and wanted to protect the environment.
Of course, there are parts I could quibble about, but that would be foolish. Whitman was a man ahead of his time.

Leaves of Grass: New York Public Library Collector's Edition (New York Public Library Collector's Editions)

Average customer rating:

All the stars in Heaven are not enough to rate these poems.

Leaves of Grass: New York Public Library Collector's Edition (New York Public Library Collector's Editions)
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0385487274
Release Date: 1997-11-10

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

All the stars in Heaven are not enough to rate these poems........2005-06-15

July 4 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." This volume, if not the single greatest achievement in American letters, is certainly one of them. When I first read "Leaves of Grass" I felt jolted, as if great, loving hands had grabbed me and shaken me into consciousness. I felt live. I'd never read anything remotely like it. Until that moment, I had no idea that simple, everydays words, could be used to such ebullient effect. Since its publictaion it has come to be thought of as an almost holy text. Indeed, there is something almost Christ-like in the love of nature and humanity that Whitman conveys. Even through the bloody civil war and the assassination of our beloved President Lincoln, Whitman was able to find life affirming beauty and hope. That this was composed by an openly gay man edifies all gay people.

Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

This is the one to own.
A classic volume in my home
As a young man Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman were my holy
Best edition of Whitman you could find
To understand Whitman is to understand America

Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose (Library of America)
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays and Lectures (Library of America)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)
Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America)
The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged

ASIN: 094045002X

Book Description

Contains the first and "deathbed" editions of "Leaves of Grass," and virtually all of Whitman's prose, with reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals and glimpses of President Lincoln, and attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the war.

Customer Reviews:

This is the one to own........2007-01-03

Beethoven killed classical style. It kind of ends with him. He was soooo good that he was impossible to follow. Others had to go in other directions.

But Whitman invents modern poetry. And with his Beethoven intensity and skill ought to have killed it, with his "Leaves of Grass". But poets are hardier than musicians, I suppose. You need a Whitman scale to rate poets. Really excellent gets a W0.5 (from 0 to 1). Like that.

But so does Whitman himself. His first real work was called "Leaves of Grass". His second was called "Leaves of Grass". His third, "Leaves of Grass"...

He kept improving his older stuff and adding on. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. Historically, you may want an older version. But this one is the mother load.

AND .... this is the big and .... it has the best preface of any book ever written. Period. No contest. He wrote this in his later years and the preface is a work of its own. Magnificent. This book makes me blue in that I could never rise to this level of speech and thought given infinite resources and tutoring. So it stands there like a continent. Explore it.

A classic volume in my home.......2006-01-29

I picked up this book in the Spring of 1990 while browsing in a bookstore. I'm no student of poetry, in fact I only purchased it because I randomly flipped it open and was enamored with the passage I found. I learned that the passage is from "Song of Myself" and have read both that epic poem and the entire collection through dozens of times.

I didn't know exactly what I had purchased that day. But over time find that turning to Whitman's poetry and prose has been a source of comfort. I find myself in his writings, and find that his messages apply clearly in the present day. This volume is a pretty hefty way to start with Whitman--you get everything from the start. If you choose to buy it, I suggest randomly exploring it--stopping here and there to read a poem. I spent weeks exploring that way, only later did I read everything from start to finish. The simplicity of the writing and the clarity of meaning is remarkable.

The Library of America edition is--in itself--beautiful. Well bound, fine paper, still in excellent condition after 15 years of use. When reading it, it is impossible not to appreciate the caliber of it's manufacture: the choice of paper, inks, typefaces, binding, etc. contribute to pleasurable experience. I have a small number of other Library of America volumes, and each is exquisitely assembled and a joy to read. They are not inexpensive, but I'd argue that they are most definitely worth every penny.

As a young man Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman were my holy .......2004-10-15

trinity. My debt and appreciation has never diminished to this threesome. In fact, only increases.

The reason that I came across the Library of America series is that after many years of use, my copy of 'Leaves of Grass' was giving way to time. I was looking for a quality hardcover that I would not only use over and over again, but one that looked elegant on my book shelf.

I am completely happy with both the quality of the book: binding, cover, print, paper and compactness as well as the contents. There are volumes of Whitman's written words available, and are worth the owning, but this collection captures his essence, and should go a long way in keeping the lover of 'Leaves of Grass' happy and satisfied.

Best edition of Whitman you could find.......2004-06-05

Leaving aside, for the moment, a review of Whitman's writing itself, let me say that this edition (by the Library of America series) is the best one out there. I've been hard pressed to find works of Whitman that aren't included in this volume: it has both the 1855 and 1892 editions of Leaves of Grass, complete, and virtually all of his prose. It even includes several important pieces that Whitman didn't add to the final edition of his works during his lifetime.

Add to that the fact that these books are well made and wear well with time, and it's definitely worth the slightly higher price (especially with the amazon discount!).

Having said that - Whitman's poetry is of course wonderful, and his prose is just as great. A lot of people know about Leaves of Grass...how many, I wonder, have taken the time to read _Specimen Days_ and find out just how great of a writer Whitman really is? This volume is heartily reccomended to give you a great all-around picture of Whitman and his work. If you're coming to Whitman for the first time, a small paperback would probably be the better bet, but if you've gotten that far and want more, this is the only book you'll need.

To understand Whitman is to understand America.......2001-09-18

This is one of the books that I bought for college that has become a well read favorite and that I think of often.

I know that critics object to Whitman's sprawling epic poetry, but it truly captures the spirit of America. This great volume includes the first and last editions of Leaves of Grass. Whitman viewed his poetry collection as something that should grow and change with time. Also included is his memoirs that show the Civil War through the eyes of a northern nurse. This is truly a unique and insightful perspective. His Civil War sensitivity comes across most clearly in the senstitive "O Captain"

Whitman's poems capture the momentum of life. No other poem can touch "There was a child went forth" for capturing the spirit of childhood. All stages of life are brilliantly illustrated here.

Book Description

Rich treasury of verse from 19th and 20th centuries, selected for popularity and literary quality, includes Poe’s "The Raven," Whitman’s "I Hear America Singing," as well as poems by Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.

Customer Reviews:

The American school anthology .......2005-05-02

This is a wonderful collection of American poetry classics. It contains most of the poems that have been taught through the years in American schools as the ' classics ' of American Literature. It does not really touch the American poetry of the past fifty years.
Most of its poems are the shorter poems of great poetic masters , for instance for Wallace Stevens, " Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird' and the 'Emperor of Ice- Cream' but not the 'Idea of Order at Key West' for Eliot, " Prufrock" but not the "Wasteland " or the "Quartets".
A wonderful collection most highly recommended.

A Manifested Dream.......2005-03-22

This book is the manifestation of the dream of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky when he said, "Poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is." Brodsky believed that poetry books should be distributed free of charge in many places, such as supermarkets and factories. He also had the idea that an anthology of poetry should be, "found in every hotel room in the land." Brodsky went on to create the American Poetry & Literacy Project in 1993, and is the compiler of this book.

This little anthology covers more than 350 years of American poetry. It includes poets who were famous in their own time such as Edgar Allen Poe, and poets whose talents weren't realized until after their death, such as Emily Dickinson. It displays American patriotism in poems such as Walt Whitman's, "I Hear America Singing", and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride." Poems such as, "Dream Deferred (Harlem)" by Langston Hughes, and "Incident" by Countee Cullen, explore themes of racial prejudice and African American culture. War, loneliness, nature, children, all the many issues and emotions we as human beings find ourselves dealing with today, are all included in this small, yet well-comprised anthology.

Many of my personal favorites include poems about poetry itself. These poets and writers give serious, and not so serious, contemplation to the art of writing. On page 65, the teacher and library assistant Marianne Moore begins her poem, "Poetry" with these lines:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.

Moore, known for her complex poems was known as the "poet's poet," and was the editor of the literary magazine The Dial, according the book's biography about her.

Pulitzer prize winner Archibald Macleish's poem, "Ars Poetica" gives his view of what a poem should be on page 72:

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

The books biography on Macleish says that he was an editor for Fortune magazine, Librarian of Congress, and Assistant Secretary of State.

According to Andrew Carroll, the Executive Director of The American Poetry and Literacy Project, Joseph Brodsky never saw the final version of this book, "101 Great American Poems" before his death. He leaves us however, with Brodsky's inspiring words in his Introduction to the book:

"Books find their readers, and if not, well let them lie around, absorb dust, rot and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out of the garbage heap. I was such a child, for what it's worth..."

For us, Brodsky's own poetry and the legacy he left behind in The American Poetry and Literacy Project, continues to be worth a fortune.

~Brian Douthit
author of "Perfectly Said: when words become art"

Inspiring.......2005-02-04

I really enjoyed this alot. I felt I was transported into a world of great poems. There really wasn't a bad piece here. Indulge and buy this book.

Excllent Read.......2003-09-15

This book is quite wonderful. It includes some of my all time favorite American Poets. I recommend it to anyone who likes poetry.

Also Recommended: Quotes, Poems, and Words That Flow by Kevin Grommersch

Quite a Bang for Your Buck!.................2001-11-19

............this small book of poetry contains the work of nearly forty of the best known American poets. From Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Frost, there are poems in this collection that are sure to appeal to everyone! Also represented in this collection are ten women poets and eight African Americans including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley. There's even a poem by Abraham Lincoln that reveals his thoughts about his childhood experiences.

Book Description

The poetry of Walt Whitman is the cornerstone of modern American verse. He was America's first truly great poet and his influence is still evident today. The first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, was a revolutionary manifesto declaring America's independence from European cultural domination. His rhapsodic free verse broke radically with poetic, tradition: it was poetry about America, its democracy, its people, and its hopes. It was uniquely American without apology—brash, proud, optimistic, and filled with the bustling energy of the new and growing nation.
This collection brings together Whitman's greatest and most famous poems spanning the whole of his career. From the groundbreaking first edition of Leaves of Grass are seven poems, including "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric."
From later editions there are such masterpieces as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and "I Hear America Singing." Also included is Whitman's great cycle of Civil War Poems, Drum-Taps, which he wrote in the months when he was ministering to the wounded in battlefield hospitals. Concluding this collection is one of his last poems, "Good-bye My Fancy!"—his touching farewell to his muse, his life, and his readers.
More than one hundred years after his death, Walt Whitman's poetry has become part of the American heritage. It is a visionary which speaks as aptly to readers today as it will to future generations. As he says in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "others...look back on me because I look'd forward to them." Whitman's poetry is a link that connects all Americans—past, present, and future.
This book features a deluxe cover, ribbon marker, top stain, and decorative endpaper with a nameplate.

Customer Reviews:

Walt Whitman is a talented, visionary writer!.......1999-11-07

This book is highly entertaining and quaint, and it also teaches acceptance and peace through example. With views that even today are still evolving in America, Whitman almost seems to have written this book in 2050, and just slipped it back in time for us to read now.

The Portable Walt Whitman: Revised Edition (The Viking Portable Library)

Average customer rating:

The great American poet
Lovingly written, compiled and edited.
Natural Poetry

The Portable Walt Whitman: Revised Edition (The Viking Portable Library)
Walt Whitman , Malcolm Cowley , and Gay Wilson Allen
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Portable Thoreau (Penguin Classics)
The Portable Emerson (Viking Portable Library)
The Portable Mark Twain (Penguin Classics)
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin Classics)
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics)

ASIN: 0140150781

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

The great American poet .......2005-12-29

Whitman is the great American poet. Emily Dickinson has a greatness more metaphorically striking and acutely original in thought. And Wallace Stevens has a music which in its intellectual complexity perhaps transcends that of Whitman.
But Whitman is as Emerson rightly understood the essential American poet.
He is the voice of the new world, of a new land, of a new conception of mankind greater and more hopeful than any seen before. He is the cataloguer of continents and the master maker of the music of ordinary places and people.
He feels most deeply into the American story and is the great democrat of American poetry. His long lines have a freedom and a sense of expansiveness which embrace worlds and celebrate the sights and sounds of his native land. He more than anyone understood the poetry of American place-names. And he had a feeling for the natural motion of America's teeming new cities and long distant shores.
His 'Song of the Self' is a heroic American assertion of Mankind in its great exuberance of hopefulness. Yet no one more than him felt the pain of America's Civil War and its suffering, the lilacs that last in the dooryard bloomed.
There are certain parts of his great poem, set pieces such as 'When I heard the learned Astronomer ' or his lines on the observation of Animals that provide a kind of wake- up shock, a kind of revelation of Thought as Beauty.
He is the definitive American poet, whether we like every aspect of his barbaric yawp or not. Or whether we sometimes feel that his celebrations are misplaced and his self- singings mere aggrandizements.
The great continent, the great Westward expansion, the great thriving of a new world is as he pictured it a sequence of ever- expanding circles of a cosmos becoming greater and greater in time. And he gives that feeling, gives the sense that life has in it some mysterious greatness that moves us always to be more in the future than we can dream we are now.

Lovingly written, compiled and edited........2001-03-13

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.

Natural Poetry.......2000-08-04

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.

Book Description

"The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman's immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece "Song of Myself." Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature.

Customer Reviews:

Loverly.......2007-05-30

What a lover?! I have fallen in love with Walt Whitman. One such as this writing such passionate things in those times or these...and with such candor. I am so thankful to have read this book. Beautiful.

Walt Whitman: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)

Average customer rating:

A fair representation of the representative American poet
Good introduction to Whitman

Walt Whitman: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
Walt Whitman
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
100 Best-Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Favorite Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Edition)

ASIN: 1931082324
Release Date: 2003-01-27

Book Description

Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon and one of the world's most renowned literary critics, surveys Walt Whitman's vast poetic work, from early notebook fragments of Song of Myself to the late poems of Good-bye My Fancy.

Customer Reviews:

A fair representation of the representative American poet .......2005-04-25

This collection contains twenty- four pieces from the work of America's greatest poet. Whitman is the quintessential American poet the one who speaks for the heart of the nation, the great cataloguer of its vast varied landscape and life. Great poems such as "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" and " I sing the body electric" provide the reader here with a true sense of Whitman's work.
Whitman with all his greatness can at times be plodding and tiring, and turn the open- road catalogue into a formula-like list. But mostly he is the celebrator of the American people in their great outward expansion through their own cosmic continent.
This work is represents fairly the one who even in his own time Emerson saw as the great representative American poet.

Good introduction to Whitman.......2003-09-18

This review is about the Dover Thrift Editions publication entitled "Walt Whitman Selected Poems" [Unabridged]. 119 pgs.

If you are any kind of fan or student of Walt Whitman, you probably own (or at least know of) "Leaves of Grass", which is THE definitive collection of Whitman's work, as it contains virtually all of his poems. Over the course of his lifetime, he continually added, revised and reorganized his material, right up until his death in 1892. Several additional poems were added to the 1897 posthumous edition, but the 24 poems chosen for this particular collection ("Selected Poems") appear unabridged and in the original chronology, as they appeared in the final Whitman edition of `Leaves' in 1892.

The Table of Contents lists both the names of the poems and the Section titles under which they fall in `Leaves', for easy cross-reference if you feel so inclined. In the rear of this book are two lists that readers who are already familiar with Whitman's work might find helpful for easier reference - Alphabetical List of Titles & Alphabetical List of First Lines - although readers who are new to Whitman may find no use in them at all.

Book Description

Diaries, notes and essays dealing with Whitman's ancestry, boyhood, Civil War experiences, nature, literary subjects and more.

Customer Reviews:

well priced volume.......2006-02-08

it is a reprint of the first edition 1883 version. The book itself is one of the best American prose works ever, especially the first 80 pages, Whitman's transcribed bloody napkin notes as a nurse in the Civil War and lounging around D.C. It then turns into what he was going to call "notes of a half paralytic," and it is a strange way to read Whitman, less body, less movement, detailing nature like a thoreau journal, but unlike hdt, he travels west, and his lecture in Kansas, where he talks about the language of england not being able to describe this landscape and the form of poetry not working for it are among his most thoughtful and interesting ideas. I like the cover and the basic physical sense of this book, too, though it is just a cheap dover.

"...as we get to Walt with his masks removed.".......2000-05-11

Holding a very special place among Whitman's writing, & very unlike anything by Thoreau, Specimen Days is as close as we get to Walt with his masks removed. There is something of a suburbanite in Whitman's appreciation of nature; essentially, he simply went, looked around & wrote down what he saw & what he did. Force of nature that he was, what he mostly saw was, of course, himself. Nature is benign. The Civil War entries are famous. The real war, which Whitman said would never get in the books, makes an appearance in the sad hospitals he visited.

Specimen Days is an inspiring message to us. Whitman knew we would be here.

Bob Rixon

"..as close as we get to Walt with his masks removed.".......1999-07-24

The Civil War entries are famous. The real war, which Whitman said would never get in the books, makes an appearance in the sad hospitals he visited.

Specimen Days is an inspiring message to us. Whitman knew we would be here.

Authors:

Authors

Authors