As the first full treatment of Walt Whitman's French sources and his later impact on French writers, this book revises our image of the poet and challenges many critical assumptions. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet C. K. Williams's personal reflection on the art of Walt Whitman In this book, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet C. K. Williams sets aside the mass of biography and literary criticism that has accumulated around Walt Whitman and attempts to go back to Leaves of Grass as he first encountered it—to explore why Whitman's epic "continues to inspire and sometimes daunt" him. The result is a personal reassessment and appreciation of one master poet by another, as well as an unconventional and brilliant introduction to Whitman. Beautifully written and rich with insight, this is a book that refreshes our ability to see Whitman in all his power.

One of the Greatest Poems in American Literature Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was considered by many to be one of the most important American poets of all time. He had a profound influence on all those who came after him. “Song of Myself”, a portion of Whitman’s monumental poetry collection “Leaves of Grass”, is one of his most beloved poems. It was through this moving piece that Whitman first made himself known to the world. One of the most acclaimed of all American poems, it is written in Whitman’s signature free verse style, without a regular form, meter, or rhythm. His lines have a mesmerizing chant-like quality, as he sought to make poetry more appealing. Few poems are as fun to read aloud as this one. Considered to be the core of his poetic vision, this poem is an optimistic and inspirational look at the world in 1855. It is exhilarating, epic, and fresh in its brilliant and fascinating diction and wordplay as it tries to capture the unique meaning of words of the day, while also embracing the rapidly evolving vocabularies of the sciences and the streets. Far ahead of its time, it was considered by many social conservatives to be scandalous and obscene for its depiction of sexuality and desire, while at the same time, critics hailed the poem as a modern masterpiece. This first version of “Song of Myself” is far superior to the later versions and will delight readers with the playfulness of its diction as it glorifies the self, body, and soul. “I am large, I contain multitudes,”

The Plural of Us is the first book to focus on the poet’s use of the first-person plural voice—poetry’s “we.” Closely exploring the work of W. H. Auden, Bonnie Costello uncovers the trove of thought and feeling carried in this small word. While lyric has long been associated with inwardness and a voice saying “I,” “we” has hardly been noticed, even though it has appeared throughout the history of poetry. Reading for this pronoun in its variety and ambiguity, Costello explores the communal function of poetry—the reasons, risks, and rewards of the first-person plural. Costello adopts a taxonomic approach to her subject, considering “we” from its most constricted to its fully unbounded forms. She also takes a historical perspective, following Auden’s interest in the full range of “the human pluralities” in a time of particular pressure for and against the collective. Costello offers new readings as she tracks his changing approach to voice in democracy. Examples from many other poets—including Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Wallace Stevens—arise throughout the book, and the final chapter offers a consideration of how contemporary writers find form for what George Oppen called “the meaning of being numerous.” Connecting insights to philosophy of language and to recent work in concepts of community, The Plural of Us shows how poetry raises vital questions—literary and social—about how we speak of our togetherness.