As scholarship has made its importance to American letters more manifest, editions of the 1855 version of Whitman's masterpiece have multiplied. This one, prepared in honor of the poem's 150th anniversary, will be hard to beat. Edited by major Americanist Reynolds Walt Whitman's America, etc. , it comes as close as possible, without being a facsimile, to reproducing Whitman's original text, which he famously self-published. The familiar litho of the young rough with open collar opens the book, and Reynold's terrific and informative afterword closes it, along with contemporary reviews some written by Whitman himself and Emerson's famous letter "I greet you at the beginning of a great career..." . Those who know Whitman only through the beautiful but bloated 1892 "deathbed" edition of Leaves of Grass will find here a lean, searing celebration of self.
WHITMAN WALT
Walt Whitman 1819-1892 fue un poeta, ensayista y periodista estadounidense, considerado el padre del verso libre y de la poesía moderna en su país. Su obra más célebre, Hojas de hierba, celebra la democracia, el cuerpo humano y la vida cotidiana. Participó como enfermero voluntario en la Guerra Civil y fusionó trascendentalismo y realismo en sus escritos.
