error in transcription of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" fixed

An Archive user pointed out an error in our transcription of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" I deleted the comma following "heavier" after consultation with Susan and after reviewing the page image.

~Liz

link to Integrated Guide added to poetry manuscripts index page

Following discussion at Camp and in consultation with Ken, I've added a link to the Integrated Guide from the Poetry Manuscripts index page, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/index.html

The purpose of the addition is to cue users to the fact that even if we have not transcribed a poetry manuscript, images of the manuscript are most likely available via the Integrated Guide.

~Liz

revisions to Criticism Bibliography

Following discussions at Camp, two changes have been made to the Bibliography of Criticism:

1. Luke Hollis checked every entry in the bibliography database to make sure the annotation field included the year of publication. Every entry should now include this information in the annotation field, which means it should subsequently show up in the results display. Following Luke's correcting of the database entries, I removed the display of the bracketed years at the ends of entries in the results display. The bracketed years were intended as a temporary fix to the problem, and with the years now displaying in every citation, they are no longer necessary. In the event that we want or need to reinstate the bracketed years in the future, I have saved the old php file, which formats the appearance of search results, here: /data/public/whitmanarchive/php/bibliography/bibliography_old_july07.php

2. I revised the bibliography index page, http://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/bibliography/index.html, so that the lines in the paragraphs explaining the search do not wrap prematurely; the premature line wrapping had been preventing the "search" and "reset" buttons from being visible without scrolling, which was causing problems for some users of the Archive.

~Liz

Addition to Russian Translations section

Lisa Renfro's translation of the Elena Evitch article "Walt Whitman in Russian Translations: Whitman's 'Footprint' in Russian Poetry" is now available via the index page of the Russian translations. Evitch's essay accompanies Stephen Stepanchev's chapter on Whitman in Russia (which was already available on the site) to provide a broad introduction to Russian translations of Whitman.

The addition of the essay prompted a slight redesign and rewording of the index page to the Russian translations. I've revised the wording of the second paragraph, and I created a new category titled "Introduction and context," which links to the Stepanchev and Evitch pieces.

~Liz

revision to New York Aurora headnote

In consultation with Susan, I have revised the final sentence of the headnote for the New York Aurora (Poems in Periodicals) from "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by mid-May, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to shape his editorials" to "Whitman published two poems in the Aurora but left his position as editor by late April, following disagreements with the publishers over their efforts to shape his editorials." This change more accurately reflects the timeline of Whitman's association with the newspaper as set out in The Journalism and as reflected by the dates of his contributions to the paper.

~Liz

selected articles from WWQR now linked from Bibliography

Selected articles from WWQR are now available as PDFs, linked from the Bibliography of Criticism. At present, we are able to link to articles from the Summer 06, Winter/Spring 06-07, Summer 07, Fall 07, Winter 07, and Winter 2008 issues. If a user performs a search that returns an item from WWQR from this issue range, the citation will be followed by a link that reads "Full text available," as in the following example.

Walkiewicz, Kathryn. "Portraits and Politics: the Specter of Osceola in Leaves of Grass." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 25 (Winter 2008), 108-115. [Examines Whitman's "Osceola" and discovers the poem is a result of the poet's "piecing and pasting" his lines out of bits of George Catlin's description of Osceola and Catlin's recording of Dr. Frederick Weedon's account of Osceola's final days; argues that Osceola "remains merely symbolic for Whitman--a text to read and interpret."] [2008] Full text available.

Clicking "Full text available" will open a PDF of the article in the browser.

We will continue to add links to articles as we are able to create PDFs. We may also revise how the PDF opens (whether it should open in the browser or as a download).

~Liz

typo corrected in 1860 LG

An Archive-user spotted a typo in our transcription of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. I've revised the line "It avails not, neither time or place—instance avails not" (from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry") to read, correctly, "It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not," as indicated by the page image.

~Liz