Walt Whitman

"Schmidgall's thrilling new edition of Whitman restores the poet's true voice—at once radical and intimate, tender and triumphant. This book vividly reminds us that Whitman's poems are the soul's-cry and heart's-blood of the American imagination."—J. D. McClatchy

"Schmidgall has followed his biography [of the poet] with a Selected Poems, and the two books together represent an enormous contribution, an outpouring of Whitman interpretation and scholarship that is quite extraordinary . . . His Selected Poems is a feast of Whitmania . . . [We scholars and students] need the earlier versions, written and arranged by the audacious younger Whitman, the one with the power to dazzle and amaze. Gary Schmidgall has done a marvelous job and a great service in presenting them."—Howard Nelson, The Hollins Critic (Hollins University, Virginia)

"Brilliantly discerning . . . The best single volume [of Whitman] I have ever seen . . . Bold, generous, and unexpurgated."—Dana Gioia

"An engaging approach [with] a fine introduction."—M. Jimmie Killingsworth, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 1999

"Finally, an edition of Whitman that doesn't overwhelm with too much material or starve with too little. Perfect for the classroom. . . . [Offers] the best poems in their original form, when they were still closest to Whitman's inspiration."—Ed Folsom, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review