The Brooklyn Standard

At the beginning of the Civil War, Whitman earned a living as a free-lance journalist, and during 1861–1862, he published twenty-five historical and nostalgic articles describing life in Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Standard. The Brooklyn Standard was established by James R. Del Vecchio as a weekly newspaper in January 1860 and merged with the Brooklyn Union in 1887. Whitman’s poem "After All, Not to Create Only" was commissioned for the opening ceremony of the fortieth National Industrial Exposition of the American Institute and was widely reprinted, appearing in three New York area newspapers, including the Brooklyn Standard, on the same day. Copies of the Brooklyn Standard are extremely rare, and the Walt Whitman Archive currently has no transcription or page images for the poem that appeared in this periodical.

Poems

"[After All, Not to Create Only]." Brooklyn Standard 7 September 1871. This poem was published on the same day in the New York Commercial Advertiser and the New York Evening Post . It was reprinted in several newspapers and as a pamphlet, After All, Not to Create Only (1871); as "Song of the Exposition" in Two Rivulets (1876); and with some revisions 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.

Holloway, Emory. "Walt Whitman’s History of Brooklyn Just Found." New York Times 17 September 1916: SM14

Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

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

Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1995.