The American

Whitman published two first printings of poems in the American (1880-1900), a weekly magazine published in Philadelphia. Designed to compete with the national weeklies like the Nation, the American, edited by William R. Balch and Robert Ellis Thompson, was a journal of politics and literature. Whitman preferred to publish in national magazines, but the editors of the American were eager to take his work, even reprinting "Patrolling Barnegat," which had first appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine (April 1881). In the fall of 1880, Balch accepted "My Picture-Gallery" and paid Whitman $5.00 for the poem. Whitman later sent "A Summer Invocation" (later "Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling") to the American, after Harper's rejected it. In a note in a journal in May 1881, Whitman explained that "the editor said he returned it because his readers wouldn't understand any meaning to it." In his journal for June 2, 1881, he recorded that he received $12.00 for the poem.

Poems

"My Picture-Gallery." The American 1 (30 October 1880): 39. Transcription and page image not currently available. Reprinted in Leaves of Grass (1881–82). The poem was originally a part of a pre-1855 notebook that was later incorporated into Pictures: An Unpublished Poem of Walt Whitman (New York: The June House, 1927).

"A Summer Invocation." The American 2 (14 June 1881): 120. Reprinted as "Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling" 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.

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1865–1885. Vol. 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.

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

Whitman, Walt. Daybooks and Notebooks. Ed. William White. Vol. 1. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. New York: New York University Press, 1978.