Atlantic Monthly

Eager for publication in the culturally important Atlantic Monthly, which had begun publication in 1857, Whitman sent editor James Russell Lowell his poem "Bardic Symbols." Lowell, the first editor of the magazine, served from November 1857 until June 1861, and was interested in promoting the work of both established and lesser known American writers. But his bias was for New England writers and Whitman was not among those whose works were routinely solicited. In addition, Lowell was gaining a reputation for taking editorial liberties with manuscripts. Nonetheless, he did publish the poem; however, he apparently found two lines in the fourth stanza suggestive of suicide and deleted them. Pleased to be included in the prestigious Atlantic, Whitman nonetheless restored the lines when he published the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Poems

"Bardic Symbols." Atlantic Monthly 5 (April 1860): 445-447. Revised as "Leaves of Grass. 1" in Leaves of Grass (1860) and reprinted as "Elemental Drifts," Leaves of Grass (1867). The final version of the poem, "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," was published in Leaves of Grass (1881–82).

"Proud Music of the Sea-Storm." Atlantic Monthly 23 (February 1869): 199-203. This poem was slightly revised and reprinted as "Proud Music of the Storm" in Passage to India (1871), Two Rivulets (1876), and in Leaves of Grass (1881–82).

Bibliography

Blodgett, Harold W., and Sculley Bradley, eds. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. New York: New York University Press, 1965.

Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Sedgwick, Ellery. "The Atlantic Monthly." American Literary Magazines: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Ed. Edward E. Chielens. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

Smith, Susan Belasco. "The Atlantic Monthly." Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. Ed. J.R.LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings. New York: Garland, 1998.