The first poem was long - 1336 lines - and untitled. The book contained a prose introduction and twelve poems. The title page did not identify the author, but the now-famous frontispiece engraving of a bearded man in an open-collared shirt and a jauntily cocked hat did. It was bound in green ribbed morocco cloth with the title embossed in gold. Walt Whitman designed the book himself and had a hand in the typesetting. Fowler and Wells was the successful publisher of what might be thought of as New Age books and pamphlets on subjects ranging from physiology to phrenology (the science of reading people's characters from the shapes of their heads) to the salubrious effects of ocean bathing. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was published in Manhattan under the imprint of Fowler and Wells in July 1855, in an edition of eight hundred copies paid for by the author. Song of Myself: And Other Poems by Walt Whitman For example, the last phrase in Verse 8, 'I mind them or show or resonance of them - I come and depart' was originally written as 'I mind them or show or resonance of them - I come again and again' in Whitman's first edition. Hass notes that Whitman made several changes to the text throughout his lifetime, altering phrases here and there to reflect different phases in his own life.

( Read an excerpt from Hass' introduction to the poem.)

Along with Paul Ebenkamp, he annotated each word of Whitman's epic 52-part poem, one of the first ever to be written in extended free verse. Hass is the editor of the new collection Song of Myself and Other Poems by Walt Whitman. 'And it really wasn't until the end of his life that he called it by the name that all schoolchildren know it by, Song of Myself.' 'In the first edition, it had no name and in the second, he called it 'Walt Whitman' and then I think he called it 'Poem of Walt Whitman, an American' for a while,' Hass tells Terry Gross. Walt Whitman wrote one of his most famous poems, Song of Myself, in 1855, but according to former United States poet laureate Robert Hass, it wasn't until much later that the poem acquired the name by which it's now known. Books Celebrating Walt Whitman and 'Leaves of Grass'

A song of myself