Walt Whitman: Song of Myself > Comments > "Review of Walt Whitman: Song of Myself"
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- Dean Ritz
- Username: dritz
- Location: Seattle, WA
- Joined PRX: Oct 13, 2003
Piece Information
- "Walt Whitman: Song of Myself"
- Summary: WNYC presents "Walt Whitman: Song of Myself." Hour hosted by Carl Hancock Rux, the program peels back Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and we discover that this groundbreaking work was the product of a man so far ahead of his time that we are just now able to fully appreciate his work.
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Review of Walt Whitman: Song of Myself
Dean Ritz
Posted on April 02, 2006 at 10:42 AM
An engraved invitation to read Whitman. For that reason alone this piece deserves praise and airtime. Even more deserved so because it is well produced, polished in sound, and wise in content.
That said, I do wish it made some distinction between the first edition and the deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass. The "death bed" edition is the edition most widely available. However, the first edition (available in a reprint from Penguin) offers more magic per word and a greater emotional velocity. It is that edition which more clearly connects to transcendentalism. It is that edition whose 150th anniversary is upon us.
Also, by distinguishing between the two termination points of his work -- its first publication, and then its final -- it puts poetry into contemporary and immediate utility. How? That it evolved over time suggests how our lives can be poetry because our journals can be poetry.
Whitman kept public this journal of his. It is a model for us, as inspiration for those of us who came into this world long after his body's departure.