Laws for Creations

I don't care for the way Cunningham refers to Whitman as "Uncle Walt," taming him perhaps by domesticating him, bringing him into the family. People used to think of Walt Disney as "Uncle Walt," not that the nickname fit Disney any better than it does Whitman, but Disney evidently played up his own avuncularity because it was such good press agentry, the nickname did half his marketing for him. Does Whitman need that? Maybe so. In any case he got lucky in attracting the 2005 sponsorship of one of America's finest novelists, one with muscle enough to require his press to put out an edition of Whitman to accompany the publication of his new SPECIMEN DAYS. Now that's marketing muscle! As an anthology of Whitman's verse, it can hardly be bettered, though warning, Cunningham makes some eccentric choices, such as the title poem, "Laws for Creations," a poem to which, everything else being equal, few have probably ever given more than a glance. However once you look at it, it has its own groove, and dances up and down the sonic chambers of the mind like Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys performing that 15 minute version of MACHINE GUN. Cunningham's choice of prose is equally telling, with tiny, jewel like excerpts from "Specimen Days," Whitman's memoirs of nursing sick and dying men and boys during the worst hours of the Civil War. If you want your "Specimen Days" reduced, in true "Classics Illustrated" style, to a matter of ten pages, here's the way to do it. Also included, "A Backwards Glance," the essay Whitman wrote towards the very end of his life justifying his ways to God and man (and used as the preface to his final re-mix of LEAVES OF GRASS). Altogether a rewarding journey and you could put it in your hip pocket while going off to the reveilles of bivouac. "Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?/ I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,/ I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away."

The editor gives good reasons for "Why another Whitman" in his richly textured introduction; here are mine. Whitman is available in countless editions, but many have copious notes, useful but distracting. If you want an uncluttered "reader's" selection (with a generous font-size too), this may be the one. Most also divide "Leaves of Grass" into sections according to names Whitman gave them in later years, but which were not present in the 1855 first edition. To read the opening "I Celebrate Myself" without notes, section breaks, or line numbers (even!) is to experience it as a whole, not as a collection. A real treat. The only caveat I have is that the paper quality seems a bit substandard. Perhaps by the time it wears out there will be an "anniversary edition" available. Otherwise, it's precisely the one I was looking for (and purchased)! Enjoy.