Synopsis "The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics) "

From Leaves of Grass to Song of Myself, all of Whitman's poetry in one volume In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America's most influential voices and that 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. Containing all Whitman's known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or "deathbed," edition of Leaves of Grass (1891-92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 "Song of Myself." - Features a completely new--and fuller--introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibility - Includes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notes For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Walt Whitman

(Author)

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Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is, undoubtedly, the most influential poet in American literature. He was born in West Hills, Long Island, the second of nine children in a family close to the Quaker creed. At the age of eleven, he finished his formal education and began working as an apprentice at the weekly The Patriot, where he would start writing his first texts. After working for other newspapers and magazines, in 1850 he decided to fully dedicate himself to poetry. Five years later, the first edition of the famous Leaves of Grass was published, consisting of twelve poems and whose 795 copies were funded by the author himself. The poetry collection aroused great interest and was widely distributed, partly due to the fascination it sparked in philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. During the Civil War, Whitman voluntarily served as a nurse in Washington D.C., an experience he would capture in The Great Army of the Sick (1863) and Memories of the War (1875). After the conflict ended in 1965, he published Drum-Taps. While employed at the Attorney General's Office, Whitman continued to raise the pen to write verses like those of "O Captain! My Captain!", which, along with others, would complete the successive editions of Leaves of Grass up to the ninth and definitive, which consisted of a total of more than four hundred poems.

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