Walt Whitman: Song of Myself
Shambhala, 1993

First published in 1855 as part of Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” was revised by Whitman in subsequent editions in ways that sometimes undermined its original freshness and vitality. Stephen Mitchell has gone back to the first edition and painstakingly compared it with the later versions, substituting only those revisions by Whitman that improved the poem. Here is Whitman at his most wild and raw, in all his greatness.