Song of Myself by Robert Hass

Song of Myself by Robert Hass

Song of Myself, the premier poem in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is widely believed to be one of the most important poems in American literature. A large part of the brilliance of Song of Myself is the raffish playfulness of its diction--the poem belongs to the mid-nineteenth century's love of wordplay that also characterizes Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.

Walt Whitman was deeply interested in the American language as it was emerging in his time. Robert Hass and Paul Ebenkamp's lexicon walks us through his greatest poem and, in its footsteps, much is revealed about the words Whitman chose in 1855--their inflections, meanings, and native usages we wouldn't otherwise know. We are made to understand, perhaps truly for the first time, Whitman's query in Song of Myself Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

In the first part of the collection, Hass offers an introduction to the poem and then, with Ebenkamp, a rich annotation of Song of Myself. The second part of this book includes poems from the span of Whitman's career, selected by Hass, that give us a fresh look at the beauty, authority, and sweep of Whitman's work.

Paul Ebenkamp is the author of THE LOUDER THE ROOM, THE DARKER THE SCREEN (Timeless, Endless Light, 2015), Four Colors for the Based God (The Equalizer: Second Series, 2014), Seizured in the Ease (Mondo Bummer, 2013), and everything at afterundisclosedrecipients.blogspot.com. He is also the editor of Modernist Women Poets: An Anthology (together Moore (Omnidawn Publishing, co-edited with Brenda Hillman and Garrett Caples, 2015), The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder and the Practice of the Wild (Counterpoint, 2010), and Song of Myself: Collected Poems and a Lexicon of Walt Whitman (Counterpoint, 2009). In 2012, SPT Poet's Theater performed a play called You Have to Take Care of My Work Together. Recently published poetry can be found in Dusie and Where Eagles Dare. He composes music using strings and devices as Position. He co-curates the Woolsey Heights reading series in Berkeley, California, with Andrew Kenower.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781582437118
ISBN 10	1582437114
Title	Song of Myself
Author	Robert Hass
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Counterpoint
Year published	2011-03-01
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.