Walt Whitman's Successful Marketing of Himself: Great Egos Think Alike

Walt Whitman was a poet known for his rather flamboyant ways and was for sure a poet of the people. He is a poet of democracy and equal rights and claims over and over again that all people are connected. The very first lines of Leaves of Grass assert this. "I celebrate myself and sing myself. For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you." Because of Whitman's understanding of people and so many elements of promotion, Leaves of Grass did well.

Walt Whitman was an expert at marketing himself in ways that most other people were completely not aware of at the time. Whitman knew how to sell and market himself and his book through a variety of ways. He published many versions changing each one to change the appeal. He published unsigned reviews that he wrote himself. He sent books to important people and used their words in promotion. He maintained much creative control in the publishing itself, playing with elements to aid in promotion. He understood the concept of creating an image. All of these things helped him market himself.

His book of poems called Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855. He continued to revise, add, regroup, and delete from this book until he died. When he died, Leaves of Grass was published in its 9^th edition. When the book was first published, it was a brief 12 pages, and by the time Whitman died, it was over 400 pages. Whitman viewed each version as one totally separate and unto itself, which was part of the idea of "selling himself." "He developed the typography, appended annexes, reworded lines, and changed punctuation, making each edition unique" (loc.gov). In other words, he continued to publish the same book over and over from 1855 until 1892.

Walt Whitman was also very conscious of his image in selling himself. The very first copy of Leaves of Grass was published with no name on the title page at all. The title page contained only an engraving of Whitman himself in the clothing of the common laborer. Whitman was the son of a carpenter and chose this image specifically as a representation of the American working man. This image could stand for any person, and he chooses it specifically for that reason.

Leaving off his name and displaying only the picture meant that this book could truly have been written by any person. This picture shows Whitman as the classic working man but also self-assured and rather cocky. His hand is on his hip and his hat is cocked to one side. The viewer can feel a little ego right away, and continues to sense the ego of Walt Whitman. As Whitman continued to revise the book throughout his lifetime, he also continued to change the engraved images on the title page with each one showing him in a more advanced and experienced way. In the 1872 version he is much older and more experienced with a full beard, but the pose and the cock of the hat still show his ego. In his last edition, he returns to a photo of the young Whitman working in Boston in the 1860's.

The preceding paragraph shows well the idea that Whitman was very conscious that he must develop and image and sell himself in order to sell the book. "Long before Norman Mailer and Truman Capote appeared on television talk shows in the 1960's or Tom Wolfe tried on his first white suit, he constructed an ''image'' of himself" (DelBanco). He was very much ahead of his time in this effort. He then proceeded to carefully construct an image of himself as "one of the roughs." Another part of his image is that nobody really knew him completely.

He was mysterious and left his audience guessing about a lot of things. "He was evasive and euphemistic about matters that modern readers want to know about -- and so his devotees have been arguing fruitlessly for 100 years over whether this or that man whom he called friend or comrade was actually a lover" (Del Banco). He also used many images of the American West as well in order to appeal to that audience. He traveled extensively in the West and came to identify both himself and his writing with that carefree, independent spirit. "His self-identification with the West was not a sustained attitude, of course; it was situational¯he was promoting himself, boosting his reputation on that western swing. This is not to say, though, that he did not firmly believe he was a man of the West at the time" (Farley).

Knowing the Ralph Waldo Emerson was rather looking for a poet to endorse, as he wrote about it in an essay. "In his essay "The Poet," Ralph Waldo Emerson had called for a voice to celebrate the poem of America itself,

"Our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the Northern trade, the Southern planting, the Western clearing, Oregon and Texas." Whitman began writing poetry that seemed to record everything Emerson called for, and his preface to the 1855 Leaves paraphrases Emerson: "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem." He sent a copy of his unsigned but registered book to Emerson and received in return the letter that launched his career as America's premier poet" (loc. Gov).

Whitman then sent a copy of Leaves of Grass to Emerson. When he received a response from this American great, he quickly published another version of Leaves of Grass. Whitman's response was included.

"Dear Sir, I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. . . . I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment, which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career" (loc.gov).

Throughout his lifetime, Whitman published reviews of Leaves of Grass that he wrote himself. He included these as appendices to the book itself. "And since he had the prescience to grasp the first axiom of modern celebrity culture -- that there is no such thing as bad publicity -- he threw into the mix, as Loving puts it, ''just enough negative criticism to make it sound less like a puff,'' including one shocked review that alluded, discreetly in Latin, to his homosexuality: Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum (that horrible sin not to be named among Christians)" (Del Banco). As any common-day celebrity knows, even bad publicity is good.

He also sent copies to many, many people in hopes of finding others who would endorse his work.

"The 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass was heralded by anonymous reviews printed in New York papers, which were clearly written by Whitman himself. They accurately described the break-through nature of his "transcendent and new" work. "An American bard at last!" trumpeted one self-review. Whitman also soon received a generous boost of publicity from Fanny Fern. The best-selling writer befriended the newly published poet and aided his public relations. She championed Leaves as daring and fresh in her popular column in the New York Ledger on May 10, 1856" (loc.gov).

Fanny Fern was able to help him promote his book through what she wrote about it. Another version was then published with these words.

"An American bard at last! One of the roughs, large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking, and breeding, his costume manly and free, his face sunburnt and bearded, his posture strong and erect, his voice bringing hope and prophecy to the generous races of young and old. We shall cease shamming and be what we really are. We shall start an athletic and defiant literature. We realize now how it is, and what was most lacking. The interior American republic shall also be declared free and independent" (loc.gov).

Another story goes that he used his editor to send copies to Juliette H. Beach, another poet and used her words as well to promote himself. The story goes like this,

"Henry Clapp, a hard-drinking editor whom Whitman had met in Pfaff's, the favorite basement saloon of the New York literati, took it upon himself to promote ''Leaves of Grass'' by sending a review copy to an upstate poet, Juliette H. Beach, who owed Clapp a favor. Her husband apparently intercepted the package and, scandalized by the upstart author who, as Loving puts it, ''envisions his own penis as a poem'' (Loving has in mind Whitman's line, ''This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry''), sent Clapp his own reaction: ''Until such time as . . . the obscene pictures, which boys in your city slyly offer for sale upon the wharves, are admitted to albums, or grace drawing room walls, quotations . . .would be an offence against decency too gross to be tolerated.'' When Mrs. Beach found out, she dashed off a letter she knew would be shown to the poet: ''I like Leaves of Grass! . . . Its egotism delights me -- that defiant ever recurring I, is so irresistibly strong and good.'' (Del Banco).

Whitman himself maintained creative control over the publishing of his revisions. In the 1860 version particularly, he "used fancy type and decorative motifs, including ethereal images of a butterfly, a sunrise, and the planet Earth on a cloud" (loc.gov). He so understood the importance of playing around with what would appeal to his readers.

"As a typesetter, newspaper editor, and publisher, Whitman was keenly aware of the material aspects of his art. He was engrossed in decisions about typeface, paper, cover design, and book size, even when he worked with commercial publishers. Leaves of Grass is not only a series of quite different editions, but within most of the editions we find another series of quite different book objects, as Whitman experiments with changing cover designs, paper size, and binding, even while using the same plates to print the book. Some of these decisions were prompted by financial concerns, some by aesthetic concerns, and some by his developing notions of how best to reach a growing democratic readership. (Whitman Making Books).

Whitman also promoted his own book and sold copies himself through subscription. He even had a commonplace book where he recorded where he sent Leaves of Grass. He recorded both those individuals that he sent free copies to and those who subscribed (loc.gov).

Walt Whitman was an absolute master at self-promotion. He did all of the things that the great promoters would do today. He got his name out there by sending copies to "celebrities" of the time to see if they would endorse him. Then, he used those endorsements in his book. He wrote his own unsigned reviews to promote his book. He understood the importance of creating an image for himself and worked very hard at this, including things wherever he was geographically or wherever he was in his life. He maintained creative control of his work and experimented with many different factors in order to better sell his book. He even took subscriptions himself. This "poet of the people" was savvy in more than just American poetry.

Works Cited

Del Banco, Andrew. Barbaric Yawp. August 22, 1999. Retrieved August 1, 2007 at

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5DB1439F931A1575BC0A96F958260

Farley, Tom, Canyons, Cowboys and Cash: Walt Whitman's American West. Retrieved

August 1, 2007 at http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/pages/Scholarship/Farley.htm

Revising Himself: Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass. Retrieved August 1, 2007 at

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/whitman-leavesofgrass.html

Western Michigan University Walt Whitman Collection. Retrieved August 1, 2007 at

http://www.wmich.edu/library/special/collections/whitman.php

Whitman Making Books. Books Making Whitman Exhibition. Retrieved August 1,

2007 at http://www.uiowa.edu/obermann/whitmanmakingbooks/exhibit.html