The Portable Walt Whitman (Penguin Classics)

It’s Walt Whitman - one of the greats in U.S. literature. Writing in the 19th century, he was both a genius and controversial, writing in a heretofore unknown style and taboo subjects. If any of you are old enough, you will remember that Levi jeans, Apple, and Volvo- to name a few- “borrowed” lines from Whitman in their advertisements. Few probably caught the literary reference. Just remember to “Sing the Body Electric”

This is a fine selection of Whitman's poetry and prose, and nicely produced--very clear and easy to read. If you like Whitman, you'll find many hours of enjoyment in this economical collection of some of his best work.

This version of Whitman's collected works, because of Mark van Doren's thoughtful introduction, is of greatest value to the researcher. I highly recommend it.

Formatting is very good. However, while the linked TOC is there and enabled on the go-to menu (broken on some other Penguin editions), there is no links to individual poems. Nor are there annotated links.This would normally be a passable edition, but if the publisher is charging a hefty $17 (the same amount as paper), then there had better be some technical jazz and other content to make it worthwhile.

Whitman rocks!

Walt Whitman, and his contemporary Emily Dickinson, were the seminal poets of their era, and had influence on American poetry far beyond their lifetimes. Which, of course, means they get studied in English classes, and that’s where I first encountered this book, during my master’s degree studies.These classes naturally focus on bits and pieces of his multi-edition collection, Leaves of Grass, and especially his “Song of Myself,” but I wanted to read this entire book, not only to get the full measure of Whitman’s poetry, but to read his prose writing, which gets far less attention. I’m glad I did.The hallmarks of Whitman’s early work are not just how he abandoned the stiff formalism of the poetry that came before, but how he would pile up lists of the characteristics and qualities of whatever or whoever he was writing about. By reading more of his work, it’s possible to see how his writing evolved, how he moved away from the lists in his later work, especially after the Civil War.Another aspect that comes out in a wider reading is his transcendentalist views: the unity and essential goodness of all things. He clearly took a lot of this from Ralph Waldo Emerson. That comes through in spades in his sometimes-fawning 1856 letter to Emerson, accompanying a copy of the latest version of Leaves, in which he calls the philosopher “Master” several times. This transcendentalism seems to get little attention in academic circles.Something that does get a lot of attention there is Whitman’s supposed homosexuality. Certainly, he does frequently mention love between men, but this seems more consistent with his transcendentalism. In his introductory essay, Professor Michael Warner notes that displays of affection between men, including kissing on the lips, was far more common, and far less sexual, in pre-Civil War America than it is today. Further, homosexuality fails to explain poems like “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers” from the 1860 edition of Leaves, and “A Woman Waits for Me” from the 1856 edition. Nor does it explain his predictions of the future equality of women with men. His transcendentalism provides a better explanation, and a less agenda-driven basis from which to see his love (including, perhaps, sexual love) of both men and women.Perhaps the most interesting of his prose work, and certainly the most readable, are his diary entries from the time he spent in Washington, D. C., during the Civil War. While his poem collections “Drum Taps” and “Sequel to Drum Taps” showed the war from a poet’s perspective, the diaries are far more personal. Whitman visited the many hospitals set up in and around the city almost daily, and spent hours, even whole nights, with the soldiers (Confederate as well as Union) being cared for there. These short pieces were apparently published in city newspapers because he reported people sending him money to give to the hospitalized soldiers, which he did. He also gave them fruit, candy, tobacco, and paper and envelopes to write letters home. Sometimes he wrote a dying soldier’s farewell letter to his family.These entries stand in contrast to Whitman’s earlier poems in their simplicity and directness. And they give a stark insight into the aftermath of the many bloody battles the two sides fought, and the state of medical care available to the wounded at the time. Whitman comments repeatedly on the stoicism and toughness of the soldiers, often in the face of isolation from friends and family, extreme pain, and even impending death.The only parts of this book that I simply could not get through were his introductions to the various editions of Leaves. The long, flowing sentences of his poetry simply didn’t translate well into prose, where I often completely lost track of what he was trying to say in his lists and digressions. Instead of flowing and lyrical, the sentences were too often turgid and incomprehensible.Finally, Whitman is unabashed and unapologetic for his love of America. His expressions of its superiority over any other nation may be a bit over the top at times but lack the mean-spiritedness of jingoism. Even in the face of the reality of slavery, which he opposed as a moral wrong, he nevertheless found plenty to love and celebrate in this nation. This too is something that seems to go ignored, if not derided, in academic circles.If you’ve only ever studied bits and pieces of Whitman’s poetry, that kind of “Whitman Sampler” doesn’t do the poet full justice. Take the time to read it all to get the full measure of his art, how it evolved over time, and how it influenced the generations of poets who followed.

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.

Great poet .........

Estado del libro muy malo.Además el producto no es el que había comprado