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How “I contain multitudes” became a cry for help for the perennially online

Song of Myself

'I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.' 
 
To mark 160 years since its first publication, a new edition of the great American poet's most famous work

Grand but intimate, earthy but also dreamy

Whitman had a fluid personality that made him able to ''merge'' invisibly, and with great empathy, with the images of other people and events that lodged in his mind...unprecedented assembling of rhythm, sound, language and images

The great unrhymed, long-lined, self-celebratory sensation of the 1850s

Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819 in Long Island, New York. Without much formal education, he began work at an early age as an office boy, printer and school teacher. His first major collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass, was self-published in 1855. During the American Civil War, Whitman volunteered as a nurse at military hospitals in Washington, and his experiences inspired his next collection, Drum-Taps, published in 1865, and Memoranda During the War (1875). Whitman was an ardent Democrat, and wrote several poems to Abraham Lincoln, including ‘O Captain! My Captain’. His poetry was seen by many as immoral, and was the cause of his dismissal from a post as clerk in the Department of the Interior, but he won praise from his contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and his work was enthusiastically received by poetic circles in England. Having survived a paralysing stroke in 1873, Whitman left Washington for Camden, New Jersey, where he continued to write up until his death on 26 March 1892.

Do I contradict myself? 
Very well then I contradict myself. 
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) 
 
Abundant, ecstatic, generous, courageous - this is the first American epic poem, a celebration of selfhood and a catalogue of nineteenth-century American life of all ages and races. Revolutionary in style and controversial in content when it was first published in 1855, Whitman's masterwork has since inspired generations with its intoxicating rhythms and images, and its inclusive, praiseful joy. 
 
THE ORIGINAL 1855 TEXT

On the Beach at Night Alone

'All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages...' 
 
A selection taken from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Whitman's works available in Penguin Classics are Leaves of Grass and The Complete Poems.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Whitman's works available in Penguin Classics are Leaves of Grass and The Complete Poems.

'All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages...' 
 
A selection taken from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Whitman Illuminated

The epic text of one of America's greatest poets, reimagined in stunning illustrations.

This is a 21st-century version of an illuminated manuscript: portable as a Kindle, but a thousand times more lovely.

Walt Whitman (Author) Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. Although controversial upon publication, Whitman's great work, Leaves of Grass, is considered one of the most influential works in the American canon. Victor Allen Crawford (Illustrator) Allen Crawford is an artist, illustrator, designer, and writer. Under the pseudonym 'Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy' Allen wrote, designed, and illustrated The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One, which was optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. Allen has appeared in The New York Times, Interview, Orion, Frieze, Vice, Tin House, and Art in America. He lives in a small Quaker town in central New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. 
 
http://www.allencrawford.net

Walt Whitman's iconic collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, has earned a reputation as a sacred American text. Whitman himself made such comparisons, going so far as to use biblical verse as a model for his own. So it's only appropriate that artist and illustrator Allen Crawford has chosen to illuminate - like medieval monks with their own holy scriptures - Whitman's masterpiece and the core of his poetic vision, 'Song of Myself'. Crawford has turned the original sixy-page poem from Whitman's 1855 edition into a sprawling 234-page work of art. The handwritten text and illustrations intermingle in a way that's both surprising and wholly in tune with the spirit of the poem - they're exuberant, rough and wild. 
 
Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is a sensational reading experience, an artefact in its own right and a masterful tribute to one of America's greatest poets.

The Complete Poems

The complete collection of the poetry of Walt Whitman, one of the most influential American voices

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) is one of the greatest American poets. Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, which he added to and reshuffled throughout his life. 
 
 
Francis Murphy is Professor of English at Smith College, Northampton USA

In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work which defined him as one of America's most influential voices, and which 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.

Whitman Poems

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

A collection of Whitman's best and most loved poetry. Whitman's art fuses oratory, journalism and song in a vivid celebration of humanity.

The major male poet of nineteenth-century America (his female counterpart is Emily Dickinson), Whitman is the poet of grand passions great open spaces, lofty mourning and male love. Written in free metres, his verse ranges across every kind of subject in a characteristically exalted mood. This volume includes a wide selection from every period of Whitman's creative career, including many poems from the celebrated LEAVES OF GRASS.

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) is one of the greatest American poets.  Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, which he added to and reshuffled throughout his life.

As Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass 'might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing', for it exhibits 'Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman transformed by a new experience.' Mr Cowley has taken the first edition from its narrow circulation among scholars, faithfully edited it, added his own introduction and Whitman's original introduction (which never appeared in any other edition during Whitman's life), and returned it to the common readership to whom the great poet really speaks.

Walt Whitman

Books by Walt Whitman

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Inspiring bookish quotes perfect for a protest banner

How “I contain multitudes” became a cry for help for the perennially online

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