Leaves of Grass - The Walt Whitman Archive

503 Pages·2007·6.95 MB·English

Leaves of Grass

Leaves
of
Grass
Sesqui-
The
centennial
Essays
Edited and with an
introduction by
susan belasco,
ed folsom, ¤
kenneth m. price
University of Nebraska Press : Lincoln and London
“Whitman at Night: ‘The Sleepers’ in 1855”
was originally published in an abbreviated
form in the Yale Review 94, no. 2 (2006).
© 2007 by the Board of Regents of the
University of Nebraska. All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Leaves of grass: the sesquicentennial essays /
edited and with an introduction by Susan
Belasco, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. )
and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-8032-6000-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-8032-6000-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892. Leaves of
grass. I. Belasco, Susan, 1950– II. Folsom,
Ed, 1947– III. Price, Kenneth M., 1954–
ps3238.l34 2007
811'.3 — dc22
2006037489
Set in itc New Baskerville by Bob Reitz.
Designed by A. Shahan.
For James E. Miller Jr. : Whitman scholar, mentor, friend

Contents
List of Illustrations x
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
susan belasco, ed folsom,
and kenneth m. price xiii
Abbreviations xix
1. What We’re Still Learning about the 1855
Leaves of Grass 150 Years Later
ed folsom 1
part 1 : Foregrounding the First Edition
2. Whitman, Marx, and the American 1848
betsy erkkila 35
3. United States and States United: Whitman’s
National Vision in 1855
m. wynn thomas 62
part 2 : Reading the First Edition
4. “One goodshaped and wellhung man”: Accentuated
Sexuality and the Uncertain Authorship of the
Frontispiece to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass
ted genoways 87
5. Whitman at Night: “The Sleepers” in 1855
alan trachtenberg 124
6. Complaints from the Spotted Hawk: Flights and
Feathers in Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass
thomas c. gannon 141
part 3 : Contextualizing the First Edition
7. Leaves of Grass and the Poetry Marketplace
of Antebellum America
susan belasco 179
8. Leaves of Grass (1855) and the Cities of
Whitman’s Memory
william pannapacker 199
9. The Lost Negress of “Song of Myself” and the
Jolly Young Wenches of Civil War Washington
kenneth m. price 224
10. “Bringing help for the sick”: Whitman and
Prophetic Biography
vivian r. pollak 244
part 4 : Aftereffects
11. The Visionary and the Visual in Whitman’s Poetics
m. jimmie killingsworth 269
12. Walt Whitman as an Eminent Victorian
lawrence buell 282
13. “To reach the workmen direct”: Horace Traubel
and the Work of the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass
matt cohen 299
14. “Profession of the calamus”: Whitman, Eliot, Matthiessen
jay grossman 321
15. Whitman and the Cold War: The Centenary
Celebration of Leaves of Grass in Eastern Europe
walter grünzweig 343
part 5 : The Life behind the Book
16. “A Southerner as soon as a Northerner”: Writing
Walt Whitman’s Biography
jerome loving 363
17. Why I Write Cultural Biography: The Backgrounds
of Walt Whitman’s America
david s. reynolds 378
18. Songs of Myself; or, Confessions of a Whitman
Collector
joel myerson 402
part 6 : A Poet Responds
19. “Strong is your hold”: My Encounters with Whitman
galway kinnell 417
part 7 : The Critical Response
20. The First Leaves of Grass: A Bibliography
donald d. kummings 429
Contributors 457
Index 463
Illustrations
1.1 Reconstruction of a fi rst edition quarto sheet 23
1.2 Whitman’s working notes 25
4.1 Frontispiece to the 1855 edition 88
4.2 Lithograph of F. S. Chanfrau as “Mose” 90
4.3 Engraving of “The Bowery Boy” 91
4.4 Hollyer’s 1888 etching of Whitman 95
4.5 Detail of a copy of the 1855 frontispiece (thin sheet) 99
4.6 Detail of a copy of the 1855 frontispiece (thick sheet) 99
4.7 Frontispiece to Poems of Walt Whitman 103
4.8 Illustration included in the 1898 edition of Leaves of Grass 115
4.9 Hollyer’s “reengraving” of the 1855 frontispiece 118
15.1 Czechoslovakian stamp of Whitman 349
15.2 The “Good Gray Poet” commemorative stamp 349