Taken from a private letter, Walt Whitman printed “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” -R.W. Emerson on the spine of the second edition of Leaves of Grass in 1856. After self-publishing the first edition, Whitman gave the second edition of his famous poetry collection all the publicity he could muster, including publishing that private letter—from writer Ralph Waldo Emerson—in the New York Tribune without the writer’s permission. Emerson was, reportedly, not pleased. Whitman also wrote three anonymous critiques of his own book.
Whether or not this marketing push meets the ethical standards one would hope from the poet whose free verse established the voice of American writing, his brazen tactics do ring unequivocally American. He may not have found the success that brought ‘Song of Myself’ and ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ to the literary canon taught in classrooms across the nation without such self-promotion.
