The Sea Is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman

by Walt Whitman, Jeffrey Yang (Editor)

Overview

From his earliest days on Long Island and in New York City to his last years in Camden, New Jersey, Walt Whitman lived close to the sea he knew and loved. The “liquid-flowing syllables” of Whitman’s poetry and prose tell specific stories of particular voyages and known shores, as well as vivid flights of imagination and keening paeans to wild winds, dark water, stormy and quiet airs. The land, for Whitman, is both immutable and still, while the sea is a realm of dynamic change, mercurial temper, and the ebb and flow of cosmic uncertainty. From “Mannahatta” to “Poem of Joys” to the magisterial ode to the slain President Lincoln, “O Captain! My Captain!” Whitman wove the strands of nautical lexicon and powerful imagery into the tapestry of our national literature. In The Sea Is a Continual Miracle, poet and editor Jeffrey Yang has compiled an invaluable resource for readers, students, and scholars of Whitman, and demonstrates how seeing him through sea glass shows America’s best-loved poet in a new light.

Hardcover is un-jacketed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611689228
Publisher:	University Press of New England
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Series:	Seafaring America Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) is one of the preeminent poets of the American canon, known chiefly for the epic poetry of Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised many times over the course of his life. JEFFREY YANG is the author of the poetry collections Vanishing-Line and An Aquarium, the translator of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies, and the editor of two poetry anthologies. He is an editor at New Directions Publishing and the New York Review of Books, and lives outside New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface: Seafaring America
Introduction: Apologia for the Sea
A Note on the Text
The Ocean (1842)
The Mississippi at Midnight (1848)
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1855)
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1856)
3. from Poem of Salutation
11. Sun-Down Poem
24. Poem of Perfect Miracles
28. Bunch Poem
31. Poem of The Sayers of The Words of The Earth
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1860–61)
from Proto-Leaf from Chants Democratic and Native American
Apostroph from Leaves of Grass
4. “Something startles me”
Poem of Joys
A Word Out of the Sea from Enfans d’Adam
7. “You and I—what the earth is, we are”
10. “Inquiring, tireless, seeking that yet unfound”
from Calamus
3. “Whoever you are holding me now in hand”
4. “These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers”
11. “When I heard at the close of the day”
13. “Calamus taste”
14. “Not heat flames up and consumes”
19. “Mind you the timid models of the rest”
26. “We two boys together clinging”
31. “What ship, puzzled at sea”
32. “What think you I take my pen in hand to record?”
37. “A leaf for hand in hand!”
Longings for Home from Messenger Leaves
To Old Age
Mannahatta
FROM DRUM-TAPS (1865) AND SEQUEL TO DRUM-TAPS: WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOM’D AND OTHER POEMS (1865–66)
Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
City of Ships
The Torch
The Ship
Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd
World, Take Good Notice from When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d
O Captain! My Captain!
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1867)
from Starting from Paumanok from Children of Adam
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
Facing West from California’s Shores from Song of the Open Road
Respondez!
As If a Phantom Caress’d Me from Songs Before Parting from As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario’s Shores
Song At Sunset
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1871–72), PASSAGE TO INDIA (1871), AND AS A STRONG BIRD ON PINIONS FREE (1872)
from Inscriptions
In Cabin’d Ships at Sea from Songs of Insurrection
France, the 18th Year of These States from Passage to India
Passage to India from Whispers of Heavenly Death
Whispers of Heavenly Death from Leaves of Grass
Warble for Lilac-Time from Now Finale to the Shore
Now Finale to the Shore
The Untold Want
Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
from As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free
As a Strong Bird with Pinions Free
O Star of France!
By Broad Potomac’s Shore
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1876) AND TWO RIVULETS (1876)
The Beauty of the Ship from Two Rivulets
Two Rivulets
Or from That Sea of Time
Eidólons
Spain, 1873–74
Prayer of Columbus
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1881–82)
Sea-Drift
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
Tears
To the Man-of-War Bird
Aboard at a Ship’s Helm
On the Beach at Night
The World Below the Brine
On the Beach at Night Alone
Song for All Seas, All Ships
Patroling Barnegat
After the Sea-Ship from Autumn Rivulets
As Consequent, Etc.
FROM SPECIMEN DAYS & COLLECT (1882–83)
Paumanok, and My Life on It as Child and Young Man
My Passion for Ferries
An Interregnum Paragraph
To the Spring and the Brook
A July Afternoon by the Pond from Autumn Side-Bits
A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach
Sea-Shore Fancies
A Two-Hours’ Ice-Sail
An Afternoon Scene
A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
A Jaunt Up the Hudson
Manhattan from the Bay
A Night Remembrance
Delaware River—Days and Nights
Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
Up the Hudson to Ulster County
An Ulster County Waterfall
Hudson River Sights
Swallows on the River
Departing of the Big Steamers
New Senses—New Joys
Unfulfilled Wants—the Arkansas River
Earth’s Most Important Stream
Nights on the Mississippi
A Hint of Wild Nature
Seeing Niagara to Advantage
The St. Lawrence Line
The Savage Saguenay
Chicoutimi and Ha-Ha Bay
My Native Sand and Salt Once More
An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
Only a New Ferry Boat
The Great Unrest of Which We Are a Part
FROM LEAVES OF GRASS (1891–92)
from First Annex: Sands at Seventy
Paumanok
From Montauk Point
A Font of Type
Fancies at Navesink
(The Pilot in the Mist—Had I the Choice—You Tides with Ceaseless Swell—Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning—And Yet Not You Alone—Proudly the Flood Comes In—By That Long Scan of Waves—Then Last of All.)
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
Yonnondio
The Voice of the Rain
Twenty Years
The Dismantled Ship from Second Annex: Good-Bye My Fancy
Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht!
Lingering Last Drops
An Ended Day
Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s
Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher
To the Sun-set Breeze
A Twilight Song
A Voice from Death
A Persian Lesson
Grand Is the Seen from A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads
“There is a river . . .” (Date unknown)
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines

What People are Saying About This

J. M. Coetzee

“Jeffrey Yang has done us a service in extracting from Whitman's oeuvre a body of poetry and prose on one of the master's great themes, the oceans and rivers of his world. Yang proves a trusty guide through Leaves of Grass in its labyrinthine backtrackings and revisions. Plunging into Whitman in his company is, as ever, a cleansing and invigorating experience.”

Mark Kurlansky

“Walt Whitman has a distinctly American voice that reveals beauty and complex layered ideas in a simple lean American language, never fades with time. Endless hours can be spent with this volume and new treasures will constantly be revealed.”

Karen Karbiener

“‘There is sea-salt in Whitman's poetry,’ wrote the great American naturalist John Burroughs of his dear friend. ‘No phase of nature seems to have impressed him so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems. ’ Jeffrey Yang's well-researched and beautifully written introduction provides compelling reasons for reading Whitman from this fresh, refreshing perspective.”

Editorial Reviews

Walt Whitman has a distinctly American voice that reveals beauty and complex layered ideas in a simple lean American language, never fades with time. Endless hours can be spent with this volume and new treasures will constantly be revealed.”—Mark Kurlansky

From the Publisher