All about Walt Whitman

2 WHITMAN’S POETRY: CRITICISM AND CONTEXT

2.1 History of Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass has an uncommon publishing history. There were nine editions during Whitman’s life and Leaves of Grass is the general title under which Whitman published his complete poetry. It all began with the first edition, published by the poet in 1855, with only the title and a picture of him on its cover. The 1855 edition contained the now historical Preface and twelve individually untitled poems (in fact, some of them received Leaves of Grass as titles). These poems, which were numbered and received titles from the second edition (1856) on, included “Song of Myself”, the first and longest one, “A Song for Occupations”, “To Think of Time” and “Great are the Myths”. In the first edition, the poet’s name only appeared in what was later known as section 24 of “Song of Myself”, in the verse: “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.” The following excerpt is an accurate description of this edition, from Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person (1867) by John Burroughs, Whitman’s friend and disciple:

In the summer of 1855 a thin quarto volume of a hundred pages, poorly printed, and inscribed in great letters on the title-page, LEAVES OF GRASS, appeared from the press of a small job-office in the city of Brooklyn, New York.

It had no author’s name, but there was a frontispiece, a choice and artistic steel engraving, portraying a man somewhere from thirty to thirty-five years of age, quite neglige, no coat or vest, shirt open at the neck, one hand in his trowsers pocket, and the other resting on his hip; face bearded, and a felt hat pushed back slightly from the forehead; a mild yet firm enough pair of eyes, and a general expression, not only about the countenance, but equally in the whole figure, that held you looking long at the picture, under a feeling you could hardly account for.[1]

The fact is that the book grew according to Whitman’s poetic production throughout his life. But it was not as simple as it appears, because actually there were many changes, rearrangements, additions and subtractions to the book. The introduction to Leaves of Grass and other writings (WHITMAN, 2002), a Norton Critical Edition, brings a detailed account of this history, of which we give a brief summary here. In 1856, Whitman added twenty poems to the second edition. “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”, “Song of Prudence”, “Salut au Monde!”, “Song of the Open Road”, “Song of the Broad-Axe” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” were among them. This edition also had a great Preface, which was in fact his letter to Emerson, his “Dear Friend and Master”, in response to the letter Emerson had written him upon receiving a copy of the first edition, acknowledging “the wonderful gift” of the Leaves and the “free and brave thought” of the poet (WHITMAN, 2002, pp.637-8).

After that, he had an amazing productive time, which lasted until 1860, when he published the third edition, with the inclusion of 124 poems to the existing book. Besides the revisions and changes, he started also to group related poems into clusters, according to the themes. For this new edition, there were three clusters: “Calamus”, centered on the celebration of comradeship, “Children of Adam”, based on procreation, and Drum-Taps, on the nation at war (Drum-Taps was begun in 1860). Actually, Drum-Taps was published in 1865 and its “Sequel”, in 1866 as supplements to Leaves of Grass, but to be later bound up with the parent edition or to be issued separately if necessary. The “Sequel” was the special edition that contained his elegy to Lincoln, the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”, the fine poetic piece on the death of President Lincoln. These clusters were so strong that they remained mostly unchanged until the final edition, while other clusters were rearranged, or simply eliminated as such, with some of their poems inserted in other sections of the book. “Chants Democratic” and “Messenger Leaves” are examples of that.

In 1866 Whitman wanted to publish a new and better edition of the Leaves, which he did in 1867. It was the fourth edition that, with its supplements, comprised this time 236 poems. One of the supplements to this edition was “Songs Before Parting”. There was then the 1871 or fifth edition, with nine new poems. Later, in 1876, there was another edition, the sixth, with very few changes. But with an accompanying volume called Two Rivulets, made up of prose and poems, such as the “Centennial Songs” (due to the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776),  “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free”, and “Passage to India.” Eventually, in 1881, with a deep shift and final rearrangement, the seventh edition was brought out. This was the first proper publication of the Leaves; for it was the first which was done by a publishing house (it was called the Osgood edition, published by James R. Osgood and co.). Whitman himself had been responsible for all the previous editions. From 1881 on, there would be no more changes, but there would be additions like “Sands at Seventy” in the eighth edition, in 1888. And “Good-Bye My Fancy” in the 1891-92 “authorized” or “deathbed” edition by David Mckay, Philadelphia, who also published the poet’s Complete Prose Works (“Specimen Days”, “Collect”, “Notes Left Over”, “November Boughs”, etc., a collection of memoranda that ranges from his early youth in Long Island to his old age in Camden, NJ.) All this work is best described by Bradley and Blodgett in this passage from their introduction:

The construction of Leaves of Grass is best to be regarded, not as a hierarchic system of themes, but as resourceful editing by a man who was obliged to be his own publisher for most of his life, who serenely confronted a hostile literary market, who enjoyed little benefit of professional advice, and who nevertheless essentially achieved what he had set out to do. It took resolution—the resolution of the poet who told himself, ‘Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.’ (WHITMAN, 2002, p.xxxi)

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[1] John Burroughs (1837-1921) met Whitman in Washington in 1864; Whitman helped him become a writer and in return Burroughs helped him to improve the poet’s skill in precise observation of nature. Notes on Walt Whitman is available at The Walt Whitman Archive,

<http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/disciples/burroughs/works.html>, a broad source of writings on and by Whitman, which will be cited more specifically in section 2.4, on secondary sources. Accessed on September 9, 2008.

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