The Sea Is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman (Seafaring America)

The Sea Is a Continual Miracle - Sea Poems and Other Writings Series: Seafaring America By: Walt Whitman, Jeffrey Yang ISBN 10: 1512600598 ISBN 13: 9781512600599 ISSN: ISFDB Publication Record # ASIN: B07NNVY894 British National Bibliography System Number: 018298731 Canadian National Catalogue (AMICUS) Number: Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication: National Library of Australia Bib ID: OCLC Number: 968246517 (OCoLC): eISBN 10: 1512600601 eISBN 13: 9781512600605 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 2016042857 (print) Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 2017000895 (ebook) Publisher: University Press of New England (2017) Poetry, American Literature Criticism, From his earliest days on Long Island and in New York City to his last years in Camden, New Jersey, Walt Whitman lived close to the sea he knew and loved. The “liquid-flowing syllables” of Whitman’s poetry and prose tell specific stories of particular voyages and known shores, as well as vivid flights of imagination and keening paeans to wild winds, dark water, stormy and quiet airs. The land, for Whitman, is both immutable and still, while the sea is a realm of dynamic change, mercurial temper, and the ebb and flow of cosmic uncertainty. From “Mannahatta” to “Poem of Joys” to the magisterial ode to the slain President Lincoln, “O Captain! My Captain!” Whitman wove the strands of nautical lexicon and powerful imagery into the tapestry of our national literature. In The Sea Is a Continual Miracle, poet and editor Jeffrey Yang has compiled an invaluable resource for readers, students, and scholars of Whitman, and demonstrates how seeing him through sea glass shows America’s best-loved poet in a new light. Seafaring America is a series of original and classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama bearing on the history of America’s engagement with our oceans and coastlines. Spanning diverse eras, populations, and geographical settings, the series strives to introduce, revive, and aggregate a wide range of exemplary and seminal stories about our American maritime heritage, including the accounts of First Peoples, explorers, voluntary and forced immigrants, fishermen, whalers, captains, common sailors, members of the navy and coast guard, marine biologists, and the crews of vessels ranging from lifeboats, riverboats, and tugboats to recreational yachts. As a sailor’s library, Seafaring America introduces new stories of maritime interest and reprints books that have fallen out of circulation and deserve reappraisal, and publishes selections from well-known works that reward reconsideration because of the lessons they offer about our relationship with the ocean. Reviews: "Yang's important volume provides a definitive demonstration of how the liquid and mystic power of the sea is critical to appreciating the scope of Whitman's prodigious innovations and accomplishments." -- "Sea History" “Jeffrey Yang has done us a service in extracting from Whitman's oeuvre a body of poetry and prose on one of the master's great themes, the oceans and rivers of his world. Yang proves a trusty guide through Leaves of Grass in its labyrinthine backtrackings and revisions. Plunging into Whitman in his company is, as ever, a cleansing and invigorating experience.” (J. M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature) “Walt Whitman has a distinctly American voice that reveals beauty and complex layered ideas in a simple lean American language, never fades with time. Endless hours can be spent with this volume and new treasures will constantly be revealed.” (Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod) “‘There is sea-salt in Whitman's poetry,’ wrote the great American naturalist John Burroughs of his dear friend. ‘No phase of nature seems to have impressed him so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems. ’ Jeffrey Yang's well-researched and beautifully written introduction provides compelling reasons for reading Whitman from this fresh, refreshing perspective.” (Karen Karbiener, New York University) . From his earliest days on Long Island and in New York City to his last years in Camden, New Jersey, Walt Whitman lived close to the sea he knew and loved. This "liquid-flowing syllables" of Whitman's poetry and prose present specific stories of particular voyages and known shores, as well as vivid flights of imagination and keening paeans to wild winds, dark water, stormy and quiet airs. The land, for Whitman, is both immutable and still, while the sea is a realm of dynamic change, mercurial temper, and the ebb and flow of cosmic uncertainty. From "Mannahatta" to "Poem of joys" to the magisterial ode to the slain President Lincoln, "O Captain! My Captain," Whitman wove the strands of nutical lexicon and powerful imagery into the tapestry of our national literature. In The Sea is a Continual Miracle, poet and editor Jeffrey Yang has compiled an invaluable resource for readers, students, and scholars of Whitman, and demonstrates how seeing him through sea glass shows America's best-loved poet in a new light. -- from back cover