A collection of essays follows the author as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor; her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her; and the responsibility she has inherited from the great thinkers and writers of the past. "'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what...

This is John Burroughs' 1922 biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'The Last Harvest'. It is a masterful piece of writing that provides a unique and profound insight into the life of American poet Last Harvest. This volume is highly recommended for those with an interest in the work and mind of Emerson, and it is not to be missed by fans of Burroughs' fantastic work. Contents include: 'Emerson And His Journals', 'Flies In Amber', 'Another Word On Thoreau',...

"Whitman emerges from this biography alive and kicking-hugely human, enormously attractive."  -Newsweek A moving, penetrating, sharply focused portrait of America's greatest poet-his genius, his passions, his androgynous sensibility-an exuberant life entwined with the turbulent history of mid-nineteenth century America. In vivid detail, Justin Kaplan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, examines the mysterious selves of this...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, published in 1882, provides an extraordinary picture of an aging poet reassessing the path of his long life, one intrinsically linked with the trajectory-and traumas-of the nation he cherished so deeply. Its diary-like entries, is a prose compilation of a life lived richly and in the service of others, as well an enduring portrait of...

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, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature. "The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."--Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walt Whitman was a poetic Visionary. He published the first edition of this monumental work in 1855...

In his poetry Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America and in so doing heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age. Combing through the full range of Whitman's writing, David Reynolds shows how Whitman gathered inspiration from every stratum...

Walt Whitman "is America," according to Ezra Pound. More than a century after his death, Whitman's name regularly appears in political speeches, architectural inscriptions, television programs, and films, and it adorns schools, summer camps, truck stops, corporate centers, and shopping malls. In an analysis of Whitman as a quintessential American icon, Kenneth Price shows how his ubiquity and his extraordinarily malleable identity have contributed...

Contained herein is a vast collection of Whitman's writing, including vignettes from his childhood, a series of powerful accounts of his work in hospitals during the Civil war, and a large amount of nature writing. Composed in 1881 primarily from sketches, notes, and essays written at various stages of the poet's life from the Civil War onwards, Specimen Days is the closest thing Whitman ever published to a traditional autobiography. A wonderful insight...

In this course, Walt Whitman and the Birth of Modern American Poetry, we'll explore how Walt Whitman broke with the tyranny of European literary forms to establish a broad, new voice for American poetry. By throwing aside the stolid conventions and clichEd meters of old Europe, Walt Whitman produced a vital, compelling form of verse, one expressive of the nature of his new world and its undiscovered countries, both physical and spiritual, intimate...

Drawing on the searing letters that Walt, George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers, wrote to each other during the Civil War, and on new evidence and new readings of the great poet, Now the Drum of War chronicles the experience of the Whitman family--from rural Long Island to working-class Brooklyn--enduring its own long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation.