Nov 14, 2009
Begun as early as 1847, “Song of Myself” first appeared as one of the twelve untitled poems of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855). Regularly revised, it became “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” in the second edition (1856) and “Walt Whitman” in the third through sixth editions (1860, 1867, 1871, and 1876). Not until the seventh edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1881, did the poem undergo its final metamorphosis in name as well as form. The first and final versions of “Song of Myself” are virtually identical in subject,...
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