Walt Whitman was deeply interested in the American language as it was emerging in his time He was fascinated by the vocabularies of the sciences and the streets and was a regular visitor to the New York Public Library where he loved to peer into the provenience of the words he overheard and read In this beautiful book Robert Hass and Paul Ebencamp walk us through Whitmans Song of Myselfone of the greatest poems in American literature Much is revealed about the words Whitman chose in 1855their inflections meanings and native usages we wouldnt otherwise know In doing so we understand perhaps for the first time Whitmans query in Song of Myself Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems In the first part of the collection Hass an introduction to the poem and with Paul Ebenkamp a rich annotation of Song of Myselfboth the first version from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and the final revised text that appeared in the socalled Deathbed edition of 1892 The second part of this book includes a selection of poems from across the span of Whitmans career that gives us a fresh look at Whitmans work