Publisher, Caedmon Audio (June 2008)

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Excerpts from "Leaves of Grass" include:

Song of Myself

O Captain! My Captain!

and more…

A poem by Whitman may be whoops and hollers, or beating of drums, or the ebb of the tide singing to itself among the stones, or laments in the night or cries of ecstasy. Indeed, Whitman was the wind which blew poetry from its moorings in tradition and sent it into fresher waters; his poems celebrating the grandness of the human condition are cadenced for the voice and meant to be spoken aloud. In this recording drawn from the Caedmon archives, reader Ed Begley, Sr. performs selections from Whitman's lifelong work, Leaves of Grass.

About the Author: Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, New York in 1819. He spent most of his early life in Brooklyn where he served as editor for a number of newspapers for brief periods. His first major work, Leaves of Grass, was published in 1855 and was subsequently published in nine enlarged editions throughout his lifetime. In 1862 in the midst of the Civil War, Whitman set out for the battlefield to find his wounded brother and continued to volunteer in hospitals throughout the length of the war. He died in 1892.