Chapter 12 - “Permit to Speak at Every Hazard”: Whitman’s Grammar of Risk

Summary

This chapter on Whitman’s 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass combines an analysis of its materiality as a commodity with readings of its textual content, arguing that both attempted to position Whitman’s poetry and persona within a simultaneously local and global literary marketplace. The edition’s double function of sales-pitch and self-commodification is highlighted by Whitman’s inclusion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reprinted letter, a bragging answer to it, his self-written reviews, and an international advertisement note alongside his first globalist text, “Poem of Salutation.” The imprint of the nineteenth century’s expanding global market is evaluated through Whitman’s ambitions to elevate his authorial status to worldwide recognition seemingly instantaneously with marketing techniques appearing across all genres in the 1856 edition. In this Whitman anticipated contemporary methods for manufacturing fame, as his model of the self-made poet tried to manifest success, measured by reader response, into reality before the fact.