Every Hour, Every Atom
A Collection of Walt Whitman's Early Notebooks and Fragments
by Walt Whitman
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Jul 01 2020 | Archive Date Jul 01 2020
University of Iowa Press | University Of Iowa Press
Talking about this book? Use #EveryHourEveryAtom #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
Some of the dimmest years in Walt Whitman’s life precede the advent of Leaves of Grass in 1855, when he was working as a journalist and fiction writer. Starting around 1850, what he’d begun writing in his personal notebooks was far more enigmatic than anything he’d done before.
One of Whitman’s most secretive projects during this timeframe was a novel, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle; serialized anonymously in the spring of 1852, and rediscovered and properly published in 2017. The key to the novel’s later discovery were plot notes Whitman had made in one of his private notebooks.
Whitman’s invaluable notebooks have been virtually inaccessible to the public, until now. Maintaining the early notebooks’ wild, syncretic feel and sample illustrations of Whitman’s beautiful and unkempt pages, scholars Zachary Turpin and Matt Miller’s thorough transcriptions have made these notebooks available to all; sharing Whitman’s secret space for developing his poetry, his writing, his philosophy, and himself.
Advance Praise
“It is one of the mysteries, maybe the mystery of American literature, that Walt Whitman, a carpenter’s son, a journalist laboring with no special distinction at his trade, produced in the middle of his thirties, one of the most original—and originary—works of American literature in ‘Song of Myself’ and Leaves of Grass. So it is thrilling that Zack Turpin and Matt Miller have given us this endlessly fascinating glimpse into the young poet’s imagination when he is, as he would say later, ‘simmering’ and on the edge of a miracle.”—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, author, Summer Snow
“The publication of Walt Whitman’s very early poetry, Every Hour, Every Atom: Walt Whitman’s Early Notebooks and Fragments, is nothing short of a miracle. Here, made generally available for the first time, are the initial tremblings and rumblings of what would become Leaves of Grass. If I compare it to seeing a planet in its early stages of formation, I don’t consider that an exaggeration.”—Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer–Prize winner, The Hours
“This collection of Walt Whitman’s early notebooks and fragments, expertly collated and edited by Zachary Turpin and Matt Miller, is an indispensable contribution to the Whitman canon. In it, we see Whitman over the years scribbling down thoughts, impressions, and poetic passages that would appear in finished form in Leaves of Grass, his landmark contribution to world literature. Thanks to Turpin and Miller, we now have an accessible, affordable volume that shows Whitman’s spontaneous effusions bubbling to the surface.”—David S. Reynolds, author, Walt Whitman’s America
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781609387037 |
| PRICE | $25.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 410 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Joseph S, Reviewer
Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman's Early Notebooks and Fragments
by Walt Whitman and edited Matt Miller and Zachary Turpin. Miller is an Associate Professor of English at Yeshiva University's Stern College. He holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Iowa and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Miller is a founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, an international collective bringing together all people interested in the life and work of Whitman, and currently serves on the board of directors. Turpin researches nineteenth-century periodical culture, digital humanities, textual recovery, and the history of epistemology and the sciences. His interests are in American poetry, particularly Walt Whitman. He has earned a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Houston.
The work presented is a collection of poetry and notes of Whitman's early writing. Turpin's expertise in document recovery is particularly useful, as many of the pages have not aged well. Even so, there are portions that are unreadable in the original. The work is recreated in standard printed text with more modern editorial markings. There is a legend for the editing markings. Miller was one of the few responsible for digitally recording the original documents at the Library of Congress. He and his group were among the last to touch the frail notebooks.
This collection presents what has been previously only seen by a few and presented in a very readable format. Every Hour, Every Atom is a book for fans and scholars of Whitman's work. These early works show the development of his poetry and his thinking. As with many notes and drafts, a great deal has been crossed out (but still readable) and abandon in final drafts. An excellent collection with introductions by both editors. Although available both in paperback and ebook format, the paperback will allow for notes in the margins and a cleared look at the prints of the original text. Extremely well done.
Anne M, Reviewer
I do love reading other people’s notebooks and diaries - only when invited, of course. Writer’s notebooks are particularly interesting if they give little glimpses into the creative mind and how snippets become poems or stories. This book is a true insight into the mind of Walt Whitman. But because it is elucidated by Whitman scholars, it is also accessible and easy to follow.
There are snatches of poetry and writings on people he has met - usually men - and descriptions of places and things that he wants to capture for future work. There are sentences, paragraphs and occasional pages and all of it allows us to see the workings of a great mind. It reads like you're looking over the shoulder of the great man as he scribbles down something that has just occurred to him in the middle of lunch. I found it fascinating. Any Whitman scholar must own it but even a casual reader of his poetry will get something extra from it.
I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
