Leaves of Grass (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

1 (p. ₇) [Preface]: The bracketed titles of this section and the following twelve poems were provided by Whitman in later editions of Leaves of Grass. In the 1855 edition, Whitman did not provide a title for the preface and wrote “Leaves of Grass” as a header for the first six poems, leaving the last six without any title (see “Publication Information”).

Whitman claimed that he had written the preface and included it in his book at the last minute. As he was assisting the Rome brothers with the printing of Leaves of Grass in their Brooklyn Heights shop, Whitman felt that his literary experiment needed an introduction. It is part of Whitman lore that the poet composed what turned out to be ten double-columned, tightly printed pages in one sitting. Whether or not the preface was a spontaneous creation, its fluid, conversational language—as well as its strong call to consciousness to American poets and their readers—make it a revolutionary statement in American culture.

The idea for a ground-breaking prefatory statement was not original to Whitman. Though Whitman’s preface is thoroughly American in voice, imagery, and intention, it also can be read as a response to or expansion of William Wordsworth’s epoch-making “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1798). Wordsworth’s popularity after his death in 1850 resulted in a flood of new American editions of his poetry; Whitman’s notebooks indicate that he was familiar with Wordsworth’s writings, and parts of Whitman’s preface seem to borrow from the poet laureate’s manifesto.

2 (p. 9) His spirit responds to his country’s spirit ... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes: Whitman here shows how the poet’s patriotism and spirit take actual shape. It is the first instance of one of Whitman’s favorite themes: the connection between physicality and spirituality. His interest in this subject is evinced by his inclusion of his phrenological chart in advertisements for Leaves of Grass. (Phrenology, a popular pseudoscience of Whitman’s day, was based on the assumption that intellectual and emotional qualities could be manifested on the body as bumps on the head.) On page 17 of the “[Preface],” Whitman names phrenologists (along with lexicographers) as among the “lawgivers of poets.”

3 (p. 10) Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest: For Whitman, the “need” here is particularly urgent. The 1850S were a time of unprecedented political corruption. A series of weak presidencies (Millard Fillmore, president 1850-1853; Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857; and James Buchanan, 1857-1861) eroded Americans’ confidence in leadership. Just a few months before the printing of the First Edition, Pierce’s failed leadership helped set the stage in “Bleeding Kansas” for what amounted to a local civil war between pro-slavery and abolitionist settlers.

4 (p. 13) This is what you shall do: The following passage is inspired by Paul’s dictates in Romans 12:1-21. The rolling lines and stately rhythms of many of Whitman’s writings were inspired by passages from the Bible, particularly Psalms and the Gospels.

5 (p. 27) The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation ... his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it: These powerful lines are the foundation of Whitman’s philosophy of literature: The poet must reflect his people, and the people embrace their poet. As he brought forth subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass without receiving the general support of the American public, Whitman realized he would not experience this symbiotic relationship with his readers during his lifetime (see note 130, to “A Backward Glance o‘er Travel’d Roads,” his end-of-career response to the demands of the “[Preface]”).

6 (p. 29) loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine: This is the reader’s introduction to Whitman’s use of “sexualized” plant life. All four words are names of plants, though they bring to mind parts of the human body as well. Whitman’s suggestiveness here has led critics to hypothesize about the tie between “grass” and pubic hair, especially in the next few pages of “Song of Myself.”

7 (p. 31) plumb in the uprights, ... braced in the beams: These are carpenter’s terms. Whitman’s father was a skilled carpenter, and Whitman himself worked in the trade while getting Leaves of Grass ready for publication. In addition to using carpentry terms throughout his poems, Whitman often includes the terminology of printing, his first real profession and a trade that remained dear to him throughout his life.

8 (p. 32) But they are not the Me myself In the following section, Whitman differentiates between soul and self (“the other I am”), spiritual and physical Walt. He sees a symbiotic relationship between the two, which is typical of the connections between physical and spiritual realms throughout Leaves of Grass.

9 (p. 33) and elder and mullen and pokeweed: The preceding section has been subject to a myriad of interpretations, many of them concerned with the sexuality of the passage; for the infamous “oral sex” interpretation, as well as others, see Edwin Haviland Miller’s Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself ”: A Mosaic of Interpretations, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989, pp. 59-67. The intimacy and moment of revelation shared by the “me” and “you” of the passage need not be purely sexual, however; it might well be a dialogue between the “self and the ”soul“ that is referenced in the section immediately preceding this one in ”Song of Myself.“

10 (p. 36) there the pistol had fallen: When the grandson of American statesman Henry Clay shot himself in New Orleans, Whitman was there to report it. The ”still photo“ feeling of many of the images in ”Song of Myself was inspired by Whitman’s years as a journalist.

11 (p. 39) Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore ... They do not think whom they souse with spray: The “swimmers” passage has intrigued many of Whitman’s readers, including Thomas Eakins (who painted “The Swimming Hole” in 1885). Especially intriguing is the number twenty-eight (or twenty-nine). In Walt Whitman’s America (see “For Further Reading”), David Reynolds provides a telling example of Whitman’s “encoded” language in his reference to Pete Doyle, with whom he began a friendship in 1865, as “16.4” (the letter numbers of his initials); there is reason to believe, then, that the number twenty-eight holds significance (whether it has something to do with the lunar or female reproductive cycle or with Whitman’s age when he experienced a particularly important event).

12 (p. 39) shuffle and breakdown: An example of how Whitman used his journalism to inspire his poetry. In an editorial for the New York Aurora, Whitman describes butchers in the marketplace: ”With sleeves rolled up, and one comer of their white apron tucked under the waist string—to whoever casts an enquiring glance at their stand, they gesticulate ... and when they have nothing else to do, they amuse themselves with a jig, or a break-down. The capacities of the ’market roarers’ in all the mystery of a double shuffle, it needs not our word to endorse“ (1842).

13 (p. 43) must sit for her daguerreotype: In the middle of this collage of everyday life, Whitman introduces one of his fascinations: the new and popular art of photography. Starting in the 1840s, daguerreotype studios lined Broadway. Matthew Brady and Gabriel Harrison were among the best, and Whitman’s favorites. Whitman was allegedly the most photographed nineteenth-century American poet; more then X images of him are available at the Walt Whitman Archive (see ”For Further Reading“).

14 (p. 43) The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips: Opium use was at an all-time high in Whitman’s New York, particularly in slum areas such as Five Points. Though there is no evidence that Whitman ever experimented with opium, he certainly saw it in use. Whitman had a fear of addictions that may be rooted in his father’s alleged alcoholism; the poet was active in the popular Temperance Movement through the early 1840S.

15 (p. 47) I cock my hat as I please indoors or out: From his own cocky image on the frontispiece of Leaves of Grass, to his order in the ”[Pref ace]“ to ”take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,“ Whitman defied the polite conventions of hat wear of his day. Clothes did indeed make the man, according to Whitman: For him, the reflection of the inner self in outer wear was analogous to the connection between the spiritual and the physical.

16 (p. 52) Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos: This line, approximately halfway into the first poem in the 1855 First Edition of Leaves of Grass, is the poet’s first use of his name. Thus one can identify the ”anonymous“ author only if one has read into the heart of the poem—a point that calls into question whether some reviewers had actually read ”Song of Myself “ in its entirety (in the New York Tribune of July 23, 1855, Charles A. Dana writes of ”our nameless bard“).

17 (p. 52) Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!: These lines appear on the title page of the City Lights edition of Allen Ginsberg’s X poem ”Howl,“ a poem meant to respond to and extend Whitman’s message 100 years after the First Edition of Leaves of Grass.

18 (p. 56) I hear the bravuras of birds: Throughout this passage, Whitman ”hears“ traditional musical instruments and sounds in nature. Thus he also listens to the fish-pedlars’ “recitative” (a term normally reserved for opera singers), the anchor-lifters’ ”refrain“ (or repeated chorus), and the drum-like ”solid roll of the train.”

19 (p. 58) I have instant conductors all over me ... lead it harmlessly through me: Whitman’s idea here is inspired by his knowledge of such popular pseudosciences as the study of animal magnetism, a phenomenon in which electrical impulses flow through the body.

20 (p. 63) Where triphammers crash .... where the press is whirling its cylinders: In this line, Whitman includes references to the art of printing. These are wonderfully appropriate to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, which he helped typeset.

21 (p. 63) or a good game of base-ball: Whitman was a fan of the new sport, the rules and features of which were standardized in the 1840S by members of the New York Knickerbocker Club. Though the birthplace of baseball is still in question, many argue that it was Whitman’s beloved Brooklyn.

22 (p. 67) the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and death chasing it up and down the storm : On December 22, 1853, the ship San Francisco set sail for South America; from December 23 to January 5 it was rudderless. Many lost their lives. Whitman probably read about this event in the New York Tribune of January 21, 1854.

23 (p. 68) I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken: As a journalist in the 1840S, Whitman was well aware of the terrible fires that ravaged Manhattan throughout that decade. In the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 2.4, 1847, he described a scene to which he had been an eyewitness: ”When my eyes caught a full view of it, I beheld a space of several lots, all covered with smoldering ruins, mortar, red hot embers, piles of smoking, half-burnt walls—a sight to turn a man’s heart sick.... the most pitiful thing in the whole affair was the sight of shivering women, their eyes red with tears, and many of them dashing wildly through the crowd, in search, no doubt, of some member of their family, who, for what they knew, might be burned in smoking ruins near by.”

After September 11, 2001, this “Song of Myself” passage appeared on numerous firehouse doors in New York City, as a tribute to firefighters killed in the line of duty.

24 (p. 69) I tell not the fall of Alamo: Whitman’s years as a newspaper reporter continue to flavor this section, which tells a lesser-known tale of a bloodier battle than the battle of the Alamo, which ended on March 6, 1836. In late March of that year some 400 Americans were murdered after they surrendered to the Mexicans near Goliad, Texas.

25 (p. 70) Did you read in the seabooks of the oldfashioned frigate-fight?: Whitman here describes a Revolutionary War sea battle that took place on September 23, 1779, between the American ship the Bon homme Richard and the British Serapis. He was interested in preserving important moments in American history in his poem.

26 (p. 76) Magnifying and applying come I: In this bold passage, the poet claims that gods and priests have made too little of the divinity of man. Whitman’s self-education in world religions is evinced by this passage, which runs through the names of gods from Jehovah to Manito (an Algonquin god), Odin (the chief Norse deity), and Mexitli (an Aztec war god).

27 (p. 78) Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking: For an earlier version of this passage, see “The House of Friends” (p. 739). The early version was first published in the New York Tribune of June 14, 1850.

28 (p. 83) And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist, / And took my time.... and took no hurt from the foetid carbon: Whitman had read enthusiastically about pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory in the years leading up to Leaves of Grass. “Lethargic mist” and “foetid carbon” are references to pre-human ages, earlier even than the period of “monstrous sauroids” (Whitman probably means dinosaurs) he refers to in the next few lines.

29 (p. 90) I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world: The title of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (1955), written 100 years after the publication of Leaves of Grass, was inspired by this line.

30 (p. 91) I stop some where waiting for you: The lack of end punctuation here is intentional, as the poem and its message were not supposed to have an end. The last word “you” circles back to the first word (“I”), as Whitman’s personal epic continues as the reader’s own.

31 (p. 91) I pass so poorly with paper and types: Whitman begins “[A Song of Occupations]” with allusions to his own first occupation in the printing industry. When he first wrote the poem, he was engaged in newspaper publishing and would continue to be—hence the “unfinished business” of “cold types” and “wet paper.”

32 (p. 101) Woman in your mother or lover or wife: This is one of many examples in which Whitman ties femaleness with motherhood first but leaves out references to a father figure as far as masculinity is concerned. See also the body-skimming passage at the end of “I Sing the Body Electric” (p. 254), in which Whitman looks at the male form in detail but fixates upon the maternal elements of women. In “[There Was a Child Went Forth]” (p. 138), Whitman speaks lovingly of his mother, but his father is described as “mean” and even “unjust.”

33 (p. 111) I am the actor and the actress: The dream sequence that starts here demonstrates extraordinary fluidity of identity. The poet is neither male nor female—or perhaps he is both. While the imagery remains heterosexual, the speaker now has the opportunity to identify his lover as a “he.” Whitman, who was gay but not completely “out,” is thus able to write about same-sex love under the guise of heterosexual passion.

34 (p. 112) and the best liquor afterward: It is difficult to determine the precise nature of this passage, a convolution of natural and sexual imagery. But it is a moment of bliss and resolution after a particularly difficult “exposure” passage in which the poet seemed to find himself “naked” and confronting deep-set anxieties.

35 (p. 112) through the eddies of the sea: This is the first of four “dream sequence” passages. The description of the swimmer sounds like the poet himself, who also identified himself as the “twenty-ninth swimmer” in “[Song of Myself].” This particular scene, with its shipwreck and washed-up bodies, was inspired by Whitman’s witnessing of the wreck of the Mexico off Hempstead Beach in 1840.

36 (p. 114) Now of the old war-days: The second dream sequence evokes scenes from Revolutionary War days. In the first stanza, Washington becomes emotional over the battle of Brooklyn Heights on August 27, 1776; next, Washington is once again teary-eyed, this time over bidding his troops farewell after America’s victory.

37 (p. 114) as we sat at dinner together: The third dream sequence, like the previous two, concerns the longing for missed human connections, and the grief over loss. Here, the mother figure mourns the disappearance of the aborigine—perhaps regretting the lost bond with indigenous American culture.

38 (p. 115) Now Lucifer was not dead .... or if he was I am his sorrowful terrible heir: The powerful “Black Lucifer” passage was deleted after 1855. Whitman evokes the Bible’s Lucifer, who, by fearlessly confronting God and fighting for his freedom from the ultimate master, became a revolutionary hero for the Romantic poets. Whitman thus vilifies the slave (“Black Lucifer”) who chooses to defy his master (the “sportsman” or hunter of the passage). Written during a time when slave revolts were on the increase, the passage is deliberately incendiary. “The vast dusk bulk that is the whale’s bulk” may well be the latent power of the enslaved masses waiting to arise—though the phrase is also sexually provocative, and may have been inspired by Melville’s 1851 novel Moby Dick.

39 (p. 119) and duly return to you: A rephrasing of the Bible, Job 1:21: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither” (King James Version). Here, as in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (p. 400), the darkness and quiet of the maternal womb is evoked as a desirable place to which to return.

40 (p. 119) whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who defiled the dead?: The poem begins and ends with indictments against those who “corrupt” their bodies and “defile” the living and the dead. Here masturbation (“corruption”) seems to be viewed negatively, which contrasts with the opinion dominating “Bunch Poem” of 1856 (retitled “Spontanous Me” in 1867).

41 (p. 127) This is a face of bitter herbs .... caoutchouc, or hog’s lard: In these lines, the poet compares human faces with items that speak of inner troubles—a face that evokes the putridity of a vomit-inducer (emetic), the addictive pull of laudanum (a mixture of opium and alcohol), the hardness of caoutchouc (crude rubber), and the soft greasiness of hog’s lard.

42 (p. 128) that emptied and broke my brother: Mental-health problems plagued the Whitman family, so it is possible that there is biographical truth to these lines. Walt’s older brother, Jesse, was eventually confined to and died in an insane asylum in 1870; his youngest brother, Edward, was mentally retarded at birth (and possibly afflicted with Down’s syndrome or epilepsy).

43 (p. 133) [Europe: The 72d and 73d Years of These States]: Whitman is reacting with favor to the revolutions going on in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy; they were set off by the dethroning of Louis-Philippe of France in 1848, when the second French Republic was declared.

44 (p. 135) [A Boston Ballad]: This poem is Whitman’s vigorous and sarcastic protest against the way state and federal authorities handled the case of Anthony Burns in 1854. Burns was an African and a slave belonging to Charles Suttle of Alexandria, Virginia. He escaped on a Boston-bound ship in early 1854; in May he was arrested, and after a weeklong trial, Judge Edward Loring ruled that Burns had to return to his master. Antislavery agitators like Wendell Phillips championed Burns as a martyr and led rallies. Because most of Boston protested the ruling, federal troops were called in to escort Burns back to the ship. Crowds jeered, and the American flag was hung upside down. On July 4 activists held a huge rally in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was there that Henry David Thoreau delivered a powerful address, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” and William Lloyd Garrison burned copies of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Constitution.

45 (p. 138) And clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull: The poet sarcastically bids the silent, passive onlookers to glue the corrupt King George III together again and set him up for the United States Congress to “worship.”

46 (p. 139) The father, strong, selfsufficient, manly, mean, angered ... the tight bargain, the crafty lure: These lines have been cited in support of the theory that Whitman had a troubled relationship with his father. Alternately, maternal imagery in this poem is comforting and attractive, from the image of the Quaker mother to the “mother” schooner with the “baby” boat “slacktowed astern.”

47 (p. 142) thirty-six years old in 1855: The birth date, height, and age correspond to factual data on Whitman.

1 (p. 147) Come, said my Soul: Whitman “framed” the experience of reading the “Death-bed” Edition with this introductory poem (which also appeared on the title pages of the two variants of the 1876 Centennial Edition—Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits and Intercalations and Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits from Life—as well as Complete Poetry and Prose of X888) and “So Long!”, the farewell poem for every edition since 1860.

2 (p. 165) the word En-Masse: The first lines of the first poem in the “Death-bed” Edition recall the message of the first poem in the 1855 Leaves of Grass (“[Song of Myself]”): The poem celebrates Whitman himself and through him all others. Here Whitman seems to be simplifying and modifying his earlier, more blatantly egotistical statement.

3 (p. 173) temperate, chaste, magnetic: Throughout the 1850S, Whitman was intrigued by several developing pseudosciences. Animal magnetism was the study of the flow of “electricity” within the human body, including how this energy might be exchanged with the help of mediums or machines.

4 (p. 173) To a Certain Cantatrice: The poem was dedicated to Marietta Alboni (1823-1894), an Italian contralto who visited America in 1852 and 1853. Whitman often referred to his love for opera; as he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, “but for the opera, I could never have composed Leaves of Grass.”

“To a Certain Cantatrice,” “The Dead Tenor” (p. 648), and “The Singer in the Prison” (p. 520) are all dedicated to opera singers; many other poems and passages—including “That Music Always Round Me” (p. 583) and the “trained soprano” passage of “[Song of Myself]” (p. 29)—relate how moved and inspired he was by this musical genre. See Robert Faner’s Walt Whitman and Opera, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1951.

5 (p. 175) I Hear America Singing: Whitman’s vision of himself as a “singer” and “chanter of songs” was in part inspired by the popularity of family singing groups in mid-nineteenth-century America. In the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of April 3,1846, Whitman wrote: “We have now several American vocal bands that in true music really surpass almost any of the artificial performers from abroad: there are the Hutchin sons, the Cheneys, the Harmoneons, the Barton family, and the Ethiopian serenaders—all of them well trained, and full of both natural and artistic capacity.”

6 (p. 183) camerado: One of Whitman’s variants for “comrade,” this word carries a suggestion of intimacy and tenderness. Whitman often associated the word “camerado” with “adhesiveness,” a term from phrenology that designates a love and closeness between friends (and one of Whitman’s code words for homosexual love).

7 (p. 190) and us two only : In 1860 four lines were included between this and the next line; they were omitted from all succeeding editions. The original lines are typical of the strong “adhesive” sentiments of the 1860 Leaves of Grass—feelings that Whitman chose to tone down or leave out of later editions.

O power, liberty, eternity at last!

O to be relieved of distinction! To make as much of

vices as virtues!

O to level occupations and the sexes! O to bring all to

common ground! O adhesiveness!

O the pensive aching to be together—you know not why,

and I know not why.

8 (p. 190) Song of Myself- See the “Publication Information” section of this edition. Major changes over the years include the addition of stanza numbers in 1860 and the addition of section numbers in 1867. After 1855 (see p. 29) Whitman also began substituting dashes and more regular punctuation for his original ellipses, the length of which he sometimes modified to signify the length and depth of pauses. Additionally, he modified and toned down many of the more provocative passages. Many believe that the 1855 version of “Song of Myself” has a spontaneous, vital quality that is missing from the more ordered later editions. The later “Song of Myself ” is, however, easier to read, and the poetry often has a more graceful, even feel.

9 (p. 214) Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son: This important identifying line went through several transitions before achieving its current smoothness and combination of universality and specificity. In 1855 it was the energetic but clumsy “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos” (p. 52); in 1867 it became the stronger statement “Walt Whitman am I, of mighty Manhattan the son”; in 1871 the line became overcrowded again: “Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the son.” The line achieved its final version in 1881.

10 (p. 218) I hear the traind’d soprano (what work with hers is this?): This line was toned down significantly in 1867. In 1855 it read: “I hear the trained soprano .... she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip” (p. 57). In 1867 the line became “I hear the trained soprano- (what work, with hers, is this?).”

11 (p. 233) And feel the dull intermitted pain: The alterations made to this passage illustrate that over time Whitman’s style became more condensed and focused but also lost some of its specificity and energy. Consider the nonspecific imagery of the first stanza of section 37 and compare it to this section’s appearance in 1855:

O Christ! My fit is mastering me!

What the rebel said gaily adjusting his throat to the rope-noose,

What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty,

his mouth spirting whoops and defiance,

What stills the traveler come to the vault at Mount Vernon,

What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores

of the Wallabout and remembers the prison ships,

What burnt the gums of the redcoat at Saratoga when he

surrendered his brigades,

These become mine and me every one, and they are but little,

I become as much more as I like.

I become any presence or truth of humanity here,

And see myself in prison shaped like another man,

And feel the dull intermitted pain (p. 72).

Most of the lines of the first stanza were removed for the 1856 edition; the second stanza began changing significantly after 1860.

12 (p. 234) Enough! enough! enough!: In 1855 the following lines appeared instead of this one:

I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation,

The whirling and whirling is elemental within me (p. 73).

After 1860 all signs of this culminating moment were removed, which was typical of the regularized pacing and modified dramatic moments of the later editions.

13 (p. 244) The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there: In 1855 this section read: “Our rendezvous is fitly appointed .... God will be there and wait till we come” (p. 84). The alterations that culminate in the present shaping of these lines (which appeared first in 1876) demonstrate Whitman’s turn from more intimate, informal relationships to universal prototypes for love: The rendezvous morphs from one between Whitman and us, the readers, to Whitman and God, who becomes his “great Camerado, the lover true.”

14 (p. 251) I stop somewhere waiting for you: Perhaps the most significant change in editions of “Song of Myself ” after 1855 was the addition of end punctuation to this line. The new period at the end of the sentence seems unfortunate: The open-endedness of the line in 1855 was a perfect affirmation of the poet’s message.

15 (p. 252) Children of Adam: This group of poems (then “Enfans d‘Adam”) and “Calamus” both appeared first in the 1860 edition, and Whitman himself hinted at the relationship between these collections. While the “Calamus” cluster has as a focus manly friendship and af fection, the poems in “Children of Adam” involved heterosexual love and the products of connections between men and women (as the title suggests). Readers have long noted the coherence of the poems in the “Calamus” cluster, which seem to tell a personal tale of the poet’s own love and losses, while the “Children of Adam” poems are varied and seem less intimate. Whitman may have purposefully juxtaposed what was important for the individual (the deep emotions of “Calamus”) and the human race as a whole (the emphasis on procreation and continuity in “Children of Adam”); perhaps unconsciously, he demonstrates his sympathies for homosexual expression in the finessed quality of the “Calamus” cluster.

16 (p. 254) From sex, from the warp and from the woof Following this line, these two lines were omitted after 1860:

(To talk to the perfect girl who understands me—the girl

of The States,

To waft to her these from my own lips—to effuse them from

my own body).

17 (p. 254) I Sing the Body Electric: This poem, along with “The Dalliance of the Eagles” (p. 425), “A Woman Waits for Me” (p. 263), and several others, came under attack in 1882. Publisher James R. Osgood of Boston asked Whitman to alter several lines and passages on the grounds that the poems violated the public statutes concerning obscene literature. Whitman consented to a few changes, but when Osgood claimed they weren’t drastic enough, Whitman wrote back: “The whole list and entire is rejected by me, and will not be thought of under any circumstances.” He immediately wrote the essay “A Memorandum at a Venture,” a condemnation of the two prevailing attitudes toward sex in America: suppression and exploitation. It was published in June 1882 in the North American Review.

18 (p. 261) For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves: With these two lines and the following section, Whitman made a major addition to this poem in 1856. In section 9, Whitman seems to trace his hand over the human body; when one reads the passage, one gets the sensation that the poet is lovingly “touching” the reader from head to toe. Though he claims equal interest in all human bodies in the fourth line of section 9, the anatomical “tour” certainly favors the male form. When he does finally get to “womanhood,” his description is more maternal than sensual-and notably shorter. D. H. Lawrence was one admirer of Whitman who nevertheless found reasons to question Whitman’s take on women, citing the poet’s “‘Athletic mothers of these States—‘ Muscles and wombs. They needn’t have had faces at all” (Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923).

19 (p. 263) They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves: These lines depicting women as confident, active, and aggressive seem wonderfully progressive even today, though critics have pointed out that Whitman “masculinized” these female objects of his affection. A friend of many early suffragettes, including Fanny Wright and Lucretia Mott, Whitman was probably familiar with many of the writings on the “new womanhood.” The Illustrated Family Gymnasium (published in 1857 by Fowler and Wells, who sold Whitman’s First Edition in their bookstore) even contained images of uncorseted women lifting barbells.

20 (p. 264) I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me: These surprisingly aggressive lines have offended many readers. In an 1883 diary entry, feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote of this poem: “He speaks as if the female must be forced to the creative act, apparently ignorant of the natural fact that a healthy woman has as much passion as a man, that she needs nothing stronger than the law of attraction to draw her to the male.” Some have looked more critically at this rape-like scene, while others see it as further evidence that Whitman simply did not know how to describe a heterosexual love scene.

21 (p. 267) I toss it carelessly to fall where it may: The condemnation of masturbation—the “solitary vice”—was a major goal of American social reformers in the 1840S and ’50S. Through the last twenty lines, the poet wrestles with guilt even as he equates the act and the elements with beautiful, organic imagery. The last six lines reference a story from Genesis 38 that is traditionally used to explain the condemnation of masturbatory practices: Onan was put to death by God for “spilling his seed” and thus defying God’s order to mankind to “be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). The speaker of “Spontaneous Me” may be as self-absorbed and greedy about his seed as Onan; notably, however, Whitman’s protagonist escapes Onan’s punishment.

22 (p. 270) Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City: In Whitman’s Manuscripts : Leaves of Grass (1860) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955, p. 64), Fredson Bowers includes an early manuscript draft of this poem, originally titled “Enfans d‘Adam. 9,” that alters the sexuality of the love interest:

Once I passed through a populous celebrated city, imprinting

on my brain for future use, its shows, with its shows, architecture,

customs and traditions

But now of all that city I remember only the man who

wandered with me, there, for love of me,

Day by day, and night by night, we were together,

All else has long been forgotten by me—I remember, I say, only one rude and ignorant man who, when I departed, long and long held me by the hand, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

23 (p. 274) Calamus: (See note 15, above, to Children of Adam.) Fitting for a collection of poems within Leaves of Grass, “Calamus” takes its name from an herb with pointy, narrow leaves. Whitman explained his choice to his English editor, William Michael Rossetti: “Calamus is a common word here. It is the very large & aromatic grass, or rush, growing about water-ponds in the valleys—spears about three feet high—often called ‘sweet flag’—grows all over the Northern and Middle States” (The Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 347). Whitman’s stress here is clearly on the universality of the plant, but there is another reason it may have caught his attention: The shape of its floral spike is suggestive of an erect phallus. Indeed, he had already sexualized “sweet-flag” in “Song of Myself (section 24). Considering that the poems in the ”Calamus“ cluster are held together by the sentiment of ”male bonding” (Whitman used the phrenological term ”adhesiveness“ to refer to this attachment between men), the choice of plant seems especially fitting.

The “Calamus” cluster has been cited as the “homoerotic” cluster compared with the predominantly heterosexual passion of the “Children of Adam” poems. The more unified and intimate feel of the “Calamus” poems suggests that Whitman was more in his element with the theme of same-sex love. Scholar Fredson Bowers—in Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860)—discovered that Whitman had written twelve of the “Calamus” poems as a separate series entitled “Live Oak with Moss”; these poems can be read as the story of an unhappy love affair, and many Whitman scholars have suggested an autobiographical component to these works. The series can be approximated by reading the poems in this sequence (numbers of poems are given in the annotations in the “Publication Information” section): Calamus 14, 20, 11, 23, 8, 32, 10, 9, 34,43, 36, and 42. For a full discussion of the “Live Oak with Moss” series, see Bowers, pp. lxiii-Ixxiv.

24 (p. 276) Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand: The teachings of Jesus in the Gospels (particularly the Book of John) inform Whitman’s message and language throughout this poem. This high, majestic tone permeates several of the poems new to the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass: Consider also “To One Shortly to Die” (p. 585, originally part of the “Messenger Leaves” cluster) and “Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals” (p. 268; “Enfans d‘Adam. 12” in 1860).

25 (p. 279) Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida as it hung trailing down: This is the first mention of the live oak in the Calamus series. The action of ”pulling off “ a twig is significant, particularly because it is the central act of ”I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” (p. 286).

26 (p. 280) Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness!: Adhesiveness was a phrenological term for same-sex friendship. On the phrenological maps of the human mind published in Fowler and Wells’s Illustrated Family Gymnasium, “adhesiveness” occupied a large site and thus had tremendous potential for affecting a person’s behavior. Whitman claimed he scored a 6 (the highest number) in “adhesiveness” on the phrenological chart he included in early editions of Leaves of Grass.

27 (p. 281) The Base of All Metaphysics: This poem shows Whitman in the role of professor—an unusual one for him, since, as he wrote in ”Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand,“ “in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company, /And in libraries I lie as one dumb” (p. 276). For an interesting juxtaposition, see ”When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” (p. 423).

28 (p. 286) I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing: This is possibly the first poem written for the ”Calamus” series; it is also credited with being the second in the ”Live Oak with Moss” series (see note 23, above). The poet is clearly comparing himself with the strong, solitary tree—though he has doubts about his ability to remain so. The doubt of the last line introduces the theme of yearning that runs throughout the ”Live Oak with Moss” grouping.

29 (p. 290) A Glimpse: The “Calamus” cluster was written and first published during what might be called Whitman’s bohemian years. On September 8,1858, he wrote an article entitled ”Bohemianism in Literary Circles” for the Brooklyn Times; after he was fired from the newspaper the next year, he began frequenting New York’s first bohemian meeting place, Pfaff’s Cellar. The restaurant/bar/café, at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, was a second home to actors like Ada Clare and radical journalists such as Henry Clapp (whose Saturday Press published several of Whitman’s poems). “A Glimpse” is thought to be a description of the poet meeting a lover—perhaps Fred Vaughan—at Pfaff’s.

30 (p. 291) I Dream’d in ’a Dream: In Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860) (p. 114), Fredson Bowers includes this earlier, more focused version of the poem’s first lines:

I dreamed in a dream of a city where all the men were like brothers,

O I saw them tenderly love each other—I often saw them,

in numbers walking hand in hand,

I dreamed that was the city of robust friends—Nothing was

greater there than manly love—it led the rest,

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

and in all their looks and words—

31 (p. 298) I see the tracks of the railroads: Whitman fully embraced progress in the name of democracy. In the following five lines, he celebrates two new wonders: the American rail system, which had grown quickly after 1830, and the electric telegraph. When Whitman first published this poem in 1856, Americans were still experimenting with various methods of telegraphing; by 1866 the first permanently successful transatlantic cable had been laid. Whitman’s poem “Passage to India,” published in 1871, applauds this technological advancement.

32 (p. 305) Song of the Open Road: The title and subject of this poem were particularly influential on the Beat poets of the 1950S Jack Kerouac embraced Whitman’s ideas of the romance and freedom of travel and the joys of the journey (rather than the destination) in his 1957 novel On the Road.

33 (p. 309) Something there is in the float of the sight of things: Whitman also uses the word “float” in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”—in the passage “I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution” (p. 319). The connotation is of a disembodied vision or knowledge, though the poet seems to be purposefully elusive here.

34 (p. 316) Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: From the mid-1840S to 1862 (when he left New York to help with the Civil War effort), Whitman rode the Brooklyn ferry almost daily. For Whitman and many of his fellow New Yorkers, the ferry was a necessary “frame” to the working day: The eight-minute trip from Brooklyn’s Fulton Street to Manhattan’s Fulton Street, and then back again, was the commute between Brooklyn’s bedroom communities and Manhattan’s workplaces. From the early 1600S until it closed some years after the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, the Brooklyn Ferry represented an important “passage” that was, for Whitman and others, also a destination in itself: Even while riders moved toward a destination, they were part of a common, shared experience.

35 (p. 319) the dark patches fall: This self-revelatory passage underwent significant revision from 1856 through later editions. Also notable are early drafts of this poem, which indicate that Whitman was struggling with identity issues and second thoughts about his literary calling. Consider this passage, found in Whitman’s Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, edited by Edward F. Grier, New York: New York Universiy Press, 1984, vol. 1, p. 230. The verbal stutter—an oral “coming to terms”—is especially moving:

I too have—

Have—have—

I too have—felt the curious questioning come upon me.

In the day they came

In the silence of the night came upon me

36 (p. 322) you dumb, beautiful ministers: Originally this line ended with the additional phrase “you novices,” which strengthens the religious associations of the word “minister.” The people and scenes looking on the ferry as it rides from shore to shore are divine agents of a greater force—yet the ferry riders have achieved the greater spiritual awakening.

37 (p. 339) Weapon shapely, naked, wan: The first six lines of the poem are a rare instance of rhyme in Whitman’s poetic oeuvre; for another example that was much despised by Whitman himself, see “O Captain! My Captain!” p. 484). This passage appeared in much the same form in its original version in the 1856 edition (with the addition of exclamation marks).

38 (p. 353) Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page, / And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme: William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) were among a handful of British writers whom Whitman admitted to reading and admiring. His anger at the ongoing popularity of British writers in America and his interest in creating a new American literary culture did not often allow him room to admire British “representative men.”

39 (p. 356) Away with old romance!: In the following stanza, the poet takes aim at two of his favorite targets: the patriarchal literary traditions of Europe, and the decadence associated with Old World attitudes. “Take no illustrations whatever from the ancients or classics, nor from the mythology, nor Egypt, Greece, or Rome—nor from the royal and aristocratic institutions and forms of Europe. Make no mention or allusion to them whatever,” wrote Whitman in manuscripts dating from the early 1850S (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, vol. 1, p. 101).

40 (p. 357) the Brooklyn bridge: One of Whitman’s few references to a bridge often closely associated with his poetry. Construction of the bridge began in 1870 and was completed in 1883, long after Whitman had left New York and settled in Camden, New Jersey. In 1876, the year that “Song of the Exposition” appeared in Two Rivulets, the completion of the Brooklyn and New York bridge towers inspired a Festival of Connection.

41 (p. 361) Song of the Redwood-Tree: This poem is exceptional in that it earned Whitman a tidy sum: He received $100 when it appeared in Harper’s Magazine of February 1874. He later included it in Two Rivulets (1876) and in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass.

42 (p. 375) Of the interminable sisters: The poet seems to be speaking of celestial bodies, including the “beautiful sister we know” (earth). His use of numbers (such as the twenty-four who appear daily, and the three hundred and sixty-five moving around the sun) recalls his use of the number twenty-eight in the “swimmers” passage of “Song of Myself”: Each number relates to cyclical movements of the planets charted by calendars.

43 (p. 389) France, The 18th Year of These States: Whitman is alluding to 1794, the year of the culmination of the Reign of Terror. After the execution of Robespierre on July 28, 1794, a reconstituted Committee of Public Safety was established, and many former terrorists were executed.

44 (p. 392) Year of Meteors (1859-60): Whitman probably had witnessed at least two meteor showers before writing this poem (one in 1833, another in 1858), but the “meteors” here refer to stellar individuals rather than heavenly bodies.

45 (p. 395) A Broadway Pageant: The poem was originally written to commemorate the arrival of the envoys of the new Japanese Embassy in New York, where treaties between Japan and America were negotiated that year.

46 (p. 400) Sea-Drift: This group of eleven poems first appeared in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass. As the title suggests, each of the poems is set in or on the sea, or at the seashore—a favorite childhood haunt of the poet‘s, and a place for reflection and inspiration throughout his life.

47 (p. 400) Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: One of Whitman’s major statements, this was the last poem written during his most important decade as an artist (1850-1860). The references to childhood on Long Island (the Native American name is Paumanok) have led many to read this poem as Whitman’s personal statement regarding his development as a poet; it also anticipates the themes of love and loss in the “Calamus” poems that Whitman probably was also composing at this time. Remembering too the strong antebellum tensions of 1859 (a frequent point of discussion at Pfaff’s), one might also read the poem as an elegy for the United States on the eve of the Civil War: The happy pair of Alabama birds is eventually separated, and the remaining bird is trapped in an alien and violent landscape.

Despite all the possibilities of meaning now seen in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” the first critical reaction to the poem was that it was “meaningless.” This attack on the poem, which appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial on December 28, 1859, was quickly refuted by Whitman in an article entitled “All About a Mocking Bird” (Saturday Press, January 7, 1860).

“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” has been set to music more than any of Whitman’s other poems, and it demonstrates his interest in opera. In Walt Whitman and Opera (pp. 86-89), Robert Faner suggests that the alternation of italicized and non-italicized passages reflects the relationship in opera of arias (sung parts) and recitatives (story lines). In New York City the 1840S and 1850S were great times for the performance of Italian opera, of which Whitman was particularly fond. The Astor Place Opera House opened in 1847 and was America’s largest theater until the Academy of Music started hosting performances in 1854; throughout these years, such artists as Marietta Alboni, Pasquale Brignoli, and Jenny Lind sang at New York venues. Whitman frequently attended operatic performances.

48 (p. 400) From the word: The poet refers to “Death,” the word repeated by the sea near the end of the poem. Death, in other words, is present in the beginnings of life too—and is one of the poet’s points of departure.

49 (p. 401) Shine! shine! shine!: The first of the arias alluded to by the poet on page 404. Here, one of the two mockingbirds “sings” words that the gifted boy-listener can understand.

50 (p. 406) Death, death, death, death, death: This onomatopoeic sound uttered by the crashing and retreating waves echoes the five-time repetition of “loved” (p. 404). Facing loss and life’s dreaded mysteries, the boy becomes an artist.

51 (p. 406) As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life: Like other poems written at this particular moment of Whitman’s career, “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” has a confessional feel: Whitman apparently was disappointed with the mild reception of the first two editions of Leaves of Grass and was also channeling the unrest and discontent of antebellum America.

52 (p. 410) To the Man-of-War-Bird: The poem was twice published in periodicals—the London Athenaeum of April 1, 1876, and the Philadelphia Progress of November 16,1878. In the latter publication, Whitman acknowledged that his poem nearly paraphrased an English translation of Jules Michelet’s French poem “The Bird.” Such acknowledgments were absent from further publications, which speaks to Whitman’s lifelong “anxiety of influence” and reticence regarding his sources and readings. It is strange, however, that the poet did not seek to alter the rather un-Whitmanesque use of “thou.”

53 (p. 413) and of the future: Some nineteen lines that followed this stanza in 1856 were removed for subsequent editions. It was typical of the mature poet to omit many of his most personal sentiments in revisions. Consider, for example, three of the lines left out of all but the poem’s first edition:

I am not uneasy but I am to be beloved by young and old men,

and to love them the same,

I suppose the pink nipples of the breasts of women with whom

I shall sleep will taste the same to my lips,

But this is the nipple of a breast of my mother, always near

and always divine to me, her true child and son.

54 (p. 417) A Boston Ballad: See note 44 to the First Edition. A comparison of the 1855 version of this poem with this final one indicates some of the changes in Whitman’s style throughout his career: He replaced ellipses with dashes, controlled and regularized line length, and toned down the heightened drama of exclamations.

55 (p. 419) Europe, The 72d and 73d Years of These States: See the note 43 to the First Edition (p. 133). Revisions made on this poem between 1855 and 1860 indicate Whitman’s growing appreciation for more even-toned meter and clarified (if less dramatic) statements. Compare, for example, the second stanza of 1860 (set in a more traditional four-line format that evokes blues rhythms) with the breathless two-line stanza of the 1855 edition.

56 (p. 421) A Hand-Mirror: If the first two poems of “By the Roadside” represent Whitman’s awakening as a political poet, “A Hand-Mirror” indicates his increasing interest and involvement in the bohemian subcultures of New York throughout the late 1850S. Although there is no evidence that Whitman himself overindulged in alcohol or drugs, he socialized with heavy drinkers at Pfaff’s Cellar and regularly walked through the Five Points area, where many an “unwholesome [opium] eater’s face” was seen on the streets.

57 (p. 421) Gods: This poem’s regular refrain, almost hymn-like, places it in a small group of more traditionally patterned poems, along with “O Captain ! My Captain!” (p. 484) and “Song of the Broad-Axe” (p. 339).

58 (p. 425) The Dalliance of the Eagles: When Whitman was courting Boston publisher James R. Osgood for the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1882, Osgood asked Whitman to remove several poems and passages on the grounds that they violated the “Public Statutes concerning obscene literature.” Surprisingly, “The Dalliance of the Eagles” was one of the “banned” poems—along with the much racier “A Woman Waits for Me” and “Spontaneous Me.”

59 (p. 426) Roaming in Thought: Late in his career, Whitman became an avid reader of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

60 (p. 430) Drum-Taps: Published in a thin, black-covered book, this collection of poems was designed to be a separate effort from Leaves of Grass: Whitman saw Drum-Taps as reflecting his time and place more specifically than his other collections. He had left New York for Virginia in December 1862, to search for his wounded brother; from that time until the end of the Civil War, Whitman spent most of his time in Washington as a hospital nurse and governmental office worker. What he saw and experienced went into Drum-Taps, the most patriotic and accessible poetry he had yet written.

61 (P. 435) Song of the Banner at Daybreak: The “call and response” format is not typical of Whitman’s style. English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) used it in such popular poems such as “Expostulation and Reply” and “We Are Seven.”

62 (p. 444) City of Ships: Lines 8 and 9 of this poem form part of the balustrade at the World Financial Center in New York City.

63 (p. 445) The Centenarian’s Story: A man old enough to remember the battle of Long Island (August 1776) recalls his story to a Civil War soldier. Whitman thus places two fights for freedom in a comparison.

64 (p. 457) The Wound-Dresser: This poem catalogues Whitman’s experiences as a Civil War hospital nurse. For the classic commentary on Whitman’s engagement in the war, see Walt Whitman and the Civil War, edited by Charles Glicksberg, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933.

65 (p. 462) Dirge for Two Veterans: Note the unusual regular stanzaic form of this poem; as in “O Captain! My Captain!” (p. 484), the closed form seems to bring solemnity to the poem’s subject.

66 (p. 465) The Artilleryman’s Vision: This poem is an interesting nineteenth-century explanation of “shell shock.”

67 (p. 470) Delicate Cluster: In this poem Whitman uses language (“cluster,” “orbs”) he had earlier employed in the “Calamus” and “Children of Adam” poems to connote male sexuality; he now applies those words to a feminized American flag.

68 (p. 471) Lo, Victress on the Peaks: It was typical of Whitman’s “late style” (after 1871) to remove more dramatic lines and phrasing. This poem exhibits another of the poet’s later tendencies: to feminize neutral imagery, in this case Libertad (“Freedom”). See also note 67, above.

69 (p. 473) To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod: Whitman often carefully selected the opening and closing poems of his collections (see, for example, the Publication Information note for “So Long!”), and “To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod” is no exception: It gives the sense of America as a “clean slate” and “equal ground” after the Civil War.

70 (p. 475) When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: In 1865-1866, lines 9—13 of what is now section 16 read as follows:

Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves?

Must I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning

with spring?

Must I pass from my song for thee;

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west,

communing with thee,

O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night?

These dramatic questions reflect Whitman’s immediate and utter despondency over the loss of his “redeemer president.” Whitman had first seen Lincoln on February 19, 1861—Lincoln’s second visit to New York City. From the top of an omnibus gridlocked in traffic, Whitman had a “capital view” of Lincoln despite the crowd of about 40,000 gathered to see him. And so began Whitman’s fascination with Lincoln, a representation of the poet’s supreme values for humanity, both political and personal (some critics have suggested that the poet may have even had a “crush” on the president). When he was working in Washington, Whitman allegedly waited by the White House gates just to catch a glimpse of Lincoln when he stepped out. In a lecture entitled “Death of Abraham Lincoln” delivered several times between 1879 and 1881 (and recorded in Collect, the literary miscellany included in Specimen Days and Collect of 1882), Whitman concluded : “Dear to the Muse—thrice dear to Nationality—to the whole human race—precious to the Union—precious to Democracy—unspeakably and forever precious—their first great Martyr Chief ”

As for the strong symbols of the lilac sprig (Whitman’s love for the president) and the star (Lincoln himself) used throughout, Whitman was struck by two particular visions in the month before the assassination: the lilacs that bloomed early due to an unusually warm spring, and the beauty of Venus sinking into the west. The thrush resembles the “solitary singer” of “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” a fig uration of Whitman as “chanter of songs.”

71 (p. 476) Night and day journeys a coffin: In sections 5 and 6, the poet describes the procession of Lincoln’s funeral train from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. Nine railroad cars draped in black traveled the 1,662 miles to Lincoln’s hometown, and 7 million Americans gathered alongside the tracks to watch it pass.

72 (p. 481) Come lovely and soothing death: As in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (p. 400), the bird’s voice is set in italics. Whitman did not use italics in the first publication of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

73 (p. 484) O Captain! My Captain!: The most popular of Whitman’s poems is also uncharacteristic of his style. Whitman grew to dislike the poem and its clumsy attempt at regularity. “The thing that tantalizes me most is not its rhythmic imperfection or its imperfection as a ballad or rhymed poem (it is damned bad in all that, I do believe) but the fact that my enemies and some of my friends who half doubt me, look upon it as a concession made to the philistines—that makes me mad,” he told his friend Horace Traubel (see With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 2, p. 333).

74 (p. 485) By Blue Ontario’s Shore: From its first appearance in 1856, this poem has functioned as Whitman’s definitive social statement. In 1856 it constituted a broad directive for how the country might be unified; the poem echoed many of the commands of the “[Preface]” (p. 7) and actually used or modified many of its most powerful statements. Section 14 of “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” for example, places Whitman’s well-known passage from the “[Preface]” (the lines beginning with “This is what you shall do,” p. 13) in a poetic format.

Whitman continued to revise this poem through subsequent editions, adding historical detail and topical references, and the changes between editions are interesting to note. Consider section 7, for example; this angry indictment of Southern slave-owners was added only for the 1867 Leaves of Grass.

75 (p. 501) Reversals: “Reversals” is a fitting name for this poem, since the commands are either “reversals” or seem to oppose Whitman’s typical commands; however, “Respondez,” the title it carried in the 1867, 1871, and 1876 editions, also fits the deliberately provocative nature of Whitman’s indictments.

76 (p. 502) Autumn Rivulets: Like the three clusters that followed it in 1881 (“Whispers of Heavenly Death,” “From Noon to Starry Night,” and “Songs of Parting”), “Autumn Rivulets” has a title that reflects the poet’s sense of impending death. His personal history provides a clear indication of why mortality was so much on his mind at this time. Beginning in his fifties, Whitman was plagued with health problems and emotional trials: He suffered a paralytic stroke in January 18 and his mother died in May of that year; he became involved in an ill-fated relationship with Harry Stafford in 1876; and he was taken ill again in 1879 while traveling west.

Despite the aches of his deteriorating body and a heavy heart, Whitman rarely brought a sense of hopelessness or sadness to these late collections. Many of the poems he selected to include in them focus on the themes of immortality and the cycles of life. The selections exhibit a thoughtful “backward glance” at a life that spanned the nineteenth century, and a sense that Whitman saw a progression and continuance in his own career as poet.

77 (p. 502) As Consequent, Etc.: Notable are Whitman’s use of the “rivulets” metaphor, an old-age echo of his image of the American poet in the 1855 “[Preface]:” “His spirit responds to his country’s spirit ... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes” (p. 9). The “windrow-drift of weeds and shells” are the scenes of American life “washed up” by the poet’s “currents.”

78 (p. 511) Old Ireland: This is Whitman’s single poem on the Irish, which is surprising in that they were the largest group of working-class immigrants during Whitman’s New York years. In Whitman and the Irish (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000, p. xii), Joann Krieg notes that a full 30 percent of New York’s population in 1855 were Irish by birth. Though “Old Ireland” is a sympathetic portrait of the Irish and the revolutionary organization the Fenian Brotherhood, Krieg and others have wondered at Whitman’s silence regarding this important population in his city.

79 (p. 517) Song of Prudence: Like “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” (p. 485), “Song of Prudence” is greatly influenced by the language of the 1855 “[Preface].” See the passage on prudence—undoubtedly inspired by Emerson’s essay “Prudence”—which begins on page 21; the section beginning “Only the soul is of itself (p. 22) corresponds with Whitman’s third stanza here. The fine line between Whitman’s prose and poetry is particularly interesting to note in this case.

80 (p. 520) The Singer in the Prison: This is one of the three poems in this cluster—along with “Vocalism” (p. 526), “Italian Music in Dakota” (p. 541), and ”Proud Music of the Storm“ (p. 543)—to be inspired specifically by the power of music, and one of the very few poems in Whitman’s entire oeuvre to be inspired by a particular event (”When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d,” on page 475, is probably the best-known example). Whitman is said to have attended a concert given by the Italian tenor Carl Parepa-Rosa at a New York prison in 1869.

81 (p. 533) Unfolded Out of the Folds: The 1881 publication of the poem garnered this celebration of womanhood more attention than had its previous revisions: It was one of the poems (along with ”The Sleepers,“ also included in the “Autumn Rivulets” cluster) that was considered indecent by Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens. Before the D.A. would allow publication of this edition, he asked publisher James R. Osgood to alter and omit particular lines of ”Unfolded Out of the Folds.”

82 (p. 537) O Star of France: As the subtitle suggests, Whitman wrote this poem in 1871 as a reaction to the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).

83 (p. 541) Italian Music in Dakota: An enthusiastic fan of Italian opera since the 1840S, Whitman mentions three of his favorites; the military band of the subtitle probably played the overtures. His taste for European opera, which always seemed in conflict with his support for an independent American culture, here finds resolution: The music of Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835; composer of Norma and La Sonnambula) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848; Poliuto) sound as “native” as the natural sounds of the Dakota plains.

84 (p. 543) Proud Music of the Storm: In Walt Whitman and Opera (pp. 103—105), Robert Faner describes section 3 of the poem as Whitman’s “musical autobiography”: The poet recounts that his love of music developed from his mother’s lullabies through the folk songs of his youth to his love of Italian opera. Critics have also commented on the poem’s “symphonic structure” and musical rhythms, though Whitman himself admitted he was a musical illiterate who could not carry a tune.

85 (p. 549) Passage to India: A celebration of progress and modern life, ”Passage to India“ reflects Whitman’s admiration of Columbus in its title (see “Prayer of Columbus,” below). He praises the accomplishments of explorers, engineers, architects, and inventors throughout, with special emphasis on the three grand achievements in lines 5, 6, and 7: the Suez canal (opened in 1869), the transcontinental railroad (Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines were joined in 1869), and the transatlantic cable (laid in 1866). Machines and the workings of man ”connect“ humanity here—a very different message from the more spiritual, poet-centered proclamations of the 1855 poems.

86 (p. 558) Prayer of Columbus : The poet here assumes the voice of Columbus, who was imprisoned after his third voyage and plagued by ill health before his death. Whitman’s admiration for the explorer leads to strong identification with him. Like Columbus, the aging poet had not gained the widespread appeal he had hoped for, and in 1873 Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke that brought on dizzy spells for the better part of a year.

87 (p. 560) The Sleepers: See notes 33-39 to the First Edition. This final version of ”The Sleepers,“ prepared for the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, excludes two notable paragraphs from the original work: the ”discovery and mortification“ passage (”O hotcheeked and blushing!“, p. 111), and the ”black Lucifer“ passage (”Now Lucifer was not dead“, p. 115). The omission of these highly charged, sexual (and politically radical, in the case of the plotting slave Lucifer) passages is a typical ”late style“ revision, as is the refigured punctuation (dashes and periods substitute for the original ellipses). The numbering of the passages is a later addition as well.

88 (p. 570) To Think of Time: A comparison of this poem with its first incarnation (p. 102) reveals much about Whitman’s changing editorial practices.

89 (p. 577) Whispers of Heavenly Death: The poems of ”Whispers of Heavenly Death“ are taken from several editions, though not so many as were used for ”Autumn Rivulets“; nine of the eighteen are from the 1860 edition. Like the other clusters new to the 1881 edition, this one shows Whitman in a philosophical, almost mystical mode. The word ”soul“ predominates among the eighteen works.

90 (p. 577) Whispers of Heavenly Death: This poem is interesting for its use of female-based imagery for night (”labial gossip,“ ”sibilant chorals“), which connects with the final ”birthing“ metaphor.

91 (p. 578) Chanting the Square Deific: The first of the allusions to the ”square deific,“ this poem is divided into four parts: The first describes four supreme authority figures (the god of the Hebrews, Jehovah; the Hindu supreme spirit, Brahma; the Roman god Saturnius, or Saturn; and the Greek god Kronos); the second part details divinities of sacrifice and love; the third, Satan; and the fourth, the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit.

92 (p. 580) Of Him I Love Day and Night: The poem’s themes make it a good fit for the provocative ”Calamus“ series, but a better match for this soul-searching group of poems. It’s interesting to compare ”Of Him I Love Day and Night“ with Wordsworth’s ”Lucy“ poems.

93 (p. 582) Assurances: The poem defies its title by including a negative statement in each of its twelve lines.

94 (p. 583) That Music Always Round Me: This poem is one of several in which Whitman celebrates the power of music (specifically opera or vocal music). See also ”The Dead Tenor“ (p. 648), ”The Mystic Trumpeter“ (p. 600), ”To a Certain Cantatrice“ (p. 173), ”Proud Music of the Storm“ (p. 543), and ”Italian Music in Dakota“ (p. 541)-

95 (p. 584) A Noiseless Patient Spider: See the ”Publication Information“ note for ”Darest Thou Now O Soul“ (p. 577). Whitman’s use of an unusually easy to understand metaphor (the spider’s creation of a web for the soul’s exploration of space and time) has made this poem a popular favorite.

96 (p. 595) From Noon to Starry Night: The idea of the title begins with the high noon described in the first poem (”Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling“) and ends with the vision of ”A Clear Midnight“ (p. 617). The poems also follow Whitman’s career from his ”noon“ on through the evening of his life, with poems selected from the First Edition as well as new works for 1881. In addition to a feeling of time that has passed, these poems convey a sense of great distances crossed: from south to north, Spain to Colorado, and back to Whitman’s beloved Mannahatta.

97 (p. 596) Faces: Among the faces described are several possible family members, including Whitman’s brother Eddie, who was possibly retarded or epileptic (the ”idiot“ of section 3), and his grandmother (the woman wearing a Quaker cap in section 5).

98 (p. 600) The Mystic Trumpeter: This is yet another poem celebrating the powers of music—in this case, its ability to evoke the past and herald the future.

99 (p. 603) To a Locomotive in Winter: Along with such poems as ”Passage to India,“ this is an example of Whitman’s celebration of progress and invention.

100 (p. 606) Mannahatta: This poem appeared in 1881 with the three final lines substituting for seven original lines:

The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating,

A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—

hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men,

The free city! No slaves! No owners of slaves!

The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters!

The city of spires and masts!

The city nested in bays! My city!

The city of such women, I am mad to be with them!

I will return after death to be with them!

The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy without

I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep with them!

It is interesting to compare the force and effectiveness of “Mannahatta” with the poem immediately preceding it, “O Magnet-South.” Though Whitman was clearly trying to portray his love for all corners of the United States, his attachment to New York City clearly shines through the superior lines of this poem.

101 (p. 608) A Riddle Song: This poem contains a question without an answer—and follows Whitman’s 1855 directive to the reader, to “listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself” (“[Song of Myself]”).

102 (p. 611) Mediums: The “mediums” of the title are Americans who will represent and convey ideas of democracy through their physical selves and actions. The poem clearly draws on the 1855 “[Preface]” (p. 7) for its thesis.

103 (p. 612) Spain, 1873-74: Whitman here supports Spain’s attempt to establish a constitutional republic and asks Americans to consider their past and offer support for the Spanish revolutionaries.

104 (p. 613) From Far Dakota’s Canons: In the last stanza, Whitman romanticizes Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn.

105 (p. 614) Old War-Dreams: The poem is interesting for its suggestion of just how much the poet was emotionally affected by his Civil War experiences; it reads as an insider’s understanding of “shell shock.”

106 (p. 615) What Best I See in Thee: This poem celebrates General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1877-1879 world tour.

107 (p. 66) Spirit That Form’d This Scene: In 1879 Whitman took a trip to the western states; he commemorates its memory in these lines.

108 (p. 618) Songs of Parting: As the title suggests, the themes of this cluster are death and departure: The poet glances backward, but also ponders his legacy and the future of America. Just as this title is a more forthright statement of Whitman’s feelings of mortality than are “Autumn Rivulets,” “Whispers of Heavenly Death,” and “From Noon to Starry Night” (the other three newly organized clusters in the 1881 Leaves of Grass), the poems in this cluster focus more directly and intensely on the themes of death and swiftly passing time.

109 (p. 618) As the Time Draws Nigh: Among the lines that were dropped or changed in revisions are these, which appeared after line 6 in 1860:

The glances of my eyes, that swept the daylight,

The unspeakable love I interchanged with women,

My joys in the open air—my walks through the Mannahatta,

The continual good will I have met—the curious attachment

of young men to me,

My reflections alone—the absorption into me from the

landscape, stars, animals, thunder, rain, and snow, in my

wanderings alone ...

110 (p. 620) Ashes of Soldiers: Whitman’s inclusion of this poem, along with “Pensive on Her Dead Gazing” (p. 626) and “Camps of Green” (p. 627) in 1881 confirms the enduring impact of his Civil War experiences.

111 (p. 623) Song at Sunset: This poem’s ecstatic, celebratory mode has made it a favorite with readers.

112 (p. 625) As at Thy Portals Also Death: New for 1881, this poem was inspired by the death in 1873 of Whitman’s beloved mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman.

113 (p. 628) The Sobbing of the Bells: Whitman penned this poem after hearing of President James A. Garfield’s death on September 19.

114 (p. 635) First Annex: Sands at Seventy: Each poem in this cluster is brief, at least for Whitman; one after another, they read as a series of spontaneous “thought-bubbles” floating through the poet’s mind. In “You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me” (p. 657), the poet writes of his special affection for these “soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, / The faithfulest—hardiest—last.”

115 (p. 637) A Font of Type: This poem celebrates the art of printing; the names for different type styles listed in line 3 show off Whitman’s insider knowledge of the “language” of printing.

116 (p. 638) The Wallabout Martyrs: This poem celebrates the Revolutionary soldiers buried in a mass grave in Brooklyn. Wallabout Bay is a bend in the East River just north of the Brooklyn Bridge.

117 (p. 638) America : A recording of Whitman reading the first four lines of this poem was allegedly made by Thomas Edison in 1891.

118 (p. 640) Fancies at Navesink: Whitman may have visited Navesink, on the New Jersey coast, in the summer of 1883 or 1884. “With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!” (p. 644), another “Sands at Seventy” poem, was also inspired by the poet’s visits to the Jersey shore.

119 (p. 645) Red Jacket (From Aloft): This poem—like “Yonnondio” (p. 649), also in “Sands at Seventy”—demonstrates Whitman’s interest in Native American culture. Red Jacket was an Iroquois leader who is said to have made the Iroquois sympathetic to the American cause in the War of 1812.

120 (p. 648) Old Salt Kossabone: This poem celebrates Whitman’s maternal heritage. Dutch Kossabone was the grandfather of Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, the poet’s mother.

121 (p. 648) The Dead Tenor: This poem is a memorial to the great Italian tenor Pasquale Brignoli (1824-1884). Whitman had enjoyed the singer’s performance of some of his favorite roles; those he mentions in the poem include Fernando in Donizetti’s La Favorita, Manrico in Verdi’s II Trovatore, the title role in Verdi’s Ernani, and Gennaro in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia.

122 (p. 650) “Going Somewhere”: This poem alludes to Anne Gilchrist, an Englishwoman (and wife of William Blake’s biographer) who greatly admired Whitman and developed a friendship with him. Gilchrist died in 1885.

123 (p. 658) As the Greek’s Signal Flame: First published in the New York Herald of December 15, 1887, the poem celebrates the birthday of the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), who had corresponded with Whitman.

124 (p. 661) Preface Note to 2d Annex, Concluding L. of G.—1891: Spontaneous-sounding remarks like these introduce or expand the themes of other poems in the collection, giving this cluster a “conversational” tone.

125 (p. 667) Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher: This poem engages in the questions regarding Shakespeare’s identity and the authorship of the plays.

126 (p. 668) Bravo, Paris Exposition!: This poem celebrates the 1889 Paris Exposition and indicates Whitman’s interest in progress and invention in his final years.

127 (p. 673) Osceola: This poem memorializes the bravery of the Seminole leader Osceola, who died, as Whitman indicates, in 1838.

128 (p. 674) A Voice from Death: This poem memorializes the thousands who died when a dam collapsed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

129 (p. 677) Mirages: This poem’s introductory note is fictional: Whitman never visited Nevada. The veracity of other unverifiable introductory statements—such as the one for “The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”—is thus called into question.

130 (p. 679) Good-Bye My Fancy!: Though “fancy” more commonly designates the imagination, the poet may be bidding his own body or physical presence farewell in this poem (consider the line “Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping”). “Fancy” might also be something (or someone) the poet has treasured and fantasized about for an extended time.

131 (p. 681) A Backward Glance o‘er Travel’d Roads: In a note to his “Prefatory Letter to the Reader, Leaves of Grass 1889,” Whitman told his public that he favored this edition of his writings: “As there are now several editions of L. of G., different texts and dates, I wish to say that I prefer and recommend the present one, complete, for future printing.” The essay “A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads” has thus remained in volumes of his collected poetry, while also collected in Complete Prose Works (1892). Along with the “[Preface]” to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, “A Backward Glance” frames Whitman’s career and the body of his work. Although he had grown more pessimistic about his reception since his poetic beginnings, he remained determined when explaining the motivations of his project and when calling American artists to consciousness.

ADDITIONAL POEMS

1 (P.719) The Spanish Lady: This poem retells the tragic tale of Inez de Castro (1320-1355).

2 (p. 723) The Punishment of Pride: In 1894 Whitman’s friend and companion Horace Traubel interviewed Charles A. Roe, one of Whitman’s former students from Little Bay Side, Queens. Roe claimed that Whitman made his students memorize a poem entitled “The Fallen Angel”; to prove it, Roe recited the poem, which turned out to be a variant of “The Punishment of Pride.” See Traubel’s article “Walt Whitman, Schoolmaster: Notes of a Conversation with Charles A. Roe, 1894,” in the Walt Whitman Fellowship Papers 14 (April 1895), pp. 81-87.

3 (p. 728) The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke: This poem was signed “W.” and designated “For the Aurora” (the Aurora was a New York newspaper of the day). Clarke (1798-1842), the so-called “Mad Poet of Broadway,” wrote several volumes of unconventional poetry and was himself a symbol of the “outsider artist.”

4 (p. 735) Song for Certain Congressmen: This poem mocks supporters of the Compromise of 1850, which granted California admittance to the Union but did not enforce legal restrictions on slavery in Utah and New Mexico. “Song for Certain Congressmen” is Whitman’s first truly political poem, and his growing political awareness is evident in the following three poems (all published over a period of less than four months).