Whitman Annotated Bib

• Whitman, Walt. “Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass.” Concise Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Leah Jewell. 5th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 1018-1032

Walt Whitman had a modest upbringing, but it was one in which he knew early he wanted to devote his life to literature. He was born in New York in 1819 to a carpenter’s family of nine. Whitman began to learn the trade of writing and publication by age 12, when he took a job as a printer’s assistant. He continued printing and teaching until 1841, when he turned to journalism full time and began fully immersing himself in literature.

Whitman saw his poetry not only as a creation of the self, but indeed a piece of the self and a reflection of American society as a whole. On the first edition of Leaves of Grass Whitman purposely leaves his name off of the front cover. He chose instead, only to leave a picture of himself in a casual pose as if there was a universal understanding that he was not the only single creator of these ideas, but merely a participant in a greater purpose.

In essence, Whitman’s goal seems to be overcoming all boundaries geographic, sp

Controversial was a term deemed common to Whitman. In Alan Shucard’s book, American Poetry The Puritans through Walt Whitman he cites an 1860 review of Leaves of Grass by the Saturday Press, a respected literary weekly. In the review, an anonymous writer says of Whitman “He has undertaken to be an artist without learning the first principle of art.” However controversial, Shucard believes Whitman was an absolute turning point for American Poetry. He cites the European poet Jorge Luis Borges as saying ”I thought that all poets the world over had been merely leading up to Whitman until 1855, and that not to imitate him was a proof of ignorance.”

Alan Shucard is a Professor of English at The University of Wisconsin-Parkside. He has published numerous literary works including essays, review essays, and reviews on American, Canadian, and Commonwealth literatures. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, and has taught there as well as the Universities of Connecticut and British Columbia. He has been Fulbright lecturer at the University of the West Indies, and has authored two volumes of poems, The Gorgon Bag, and The Louse on the head of a Yawning Lord.

• Shucard, Alan. American Poetry, The Puritans through Walt Whitman. Boston: Twayne, 1988.<

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