Steven Olsen-Smith

Live Oak, with Moss : A Restorative Edition

Steven Olsen-Smith — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:50:32 PST

This is the first printing of a newly restored edition of Walt Whitman’s twelve-poem sequence written in the late 1850s and subsequently dispersed by the poet among the “Calamus” cluster in Leaves of Grass. After an exhaustive textual analysis of Whitman’s manuscripts of the poems, Steven Olsen-Smith, professor of English at Boise State University, has restored the sequence to its original state and supplied an afterword on the interpretive significance of the restorations. Images of Whitman’s annotated manuscript pages parallel the restored text. A very personal foreword by poet Richard Tayson positions the piece within the context of a 21st century gay man. Photographs by University of Connecticut Professor of Art Emeritus Roger Crossgrove provide a further visual narrative.

Adapting Humanities Scholarship for Digital Environments and Methods (Invited Lecture)

Steven Olsen-Smith — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:14:47 PDT

Student Researchers Spend Summer with an Icon of American Literature

Erin Ryan — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:53:40 PDT

Call Me Digital

Jennifer Howard — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:41:01 PDT

Swimming Through Libraries

James Williford — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:12:35 PDT

Guest Editor, Special Issues on "Melville's Reading and Marginalia" and "Melville's Sources," Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 10.3 (2008) and 6.1 (2004)

Steven Olsen-Smith — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:10:12 PST

General Editor, Melville's Marginalia Online

Steven Olsen-Smith — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:05:36 PST

The Inscription of Walt Whitman's "Live Oak, with Moss" Sequence: A Restorative Edition

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:51:10 PST

Captain John Smith

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:30:16 PST

Moby-Dick: Genesis, Influence, and Intention (Panel Chair)

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:32 PST

Round Table on Teaching Melville

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:29 PST

Melville’s Poetic Use of Thomas Beale’s 'Natural History of the Sperm Whale'

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:26 PST

'Herman Melville (1819-1891)' and 'Walt Whitman (1819-1892)'

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:24 PST

A Whale of a Job: Boise State Researchers Uncover New Knowledge About Literary Icon Herman Melville

Sherry Squires — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:21 PST

Rarely does one get a glimpse into the formative thoughts and intellect of one of the world’s legendary writers. Thanks to Melville’s Marginalia Online, new insight into American icon Herman Melville and his work is surfacing more than a century after his death.

"Live Oak, with Moss" and "Calamus": Textual Inhibitions in Whitman Criticism

Steven Olsen-Smith et al. — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:19 PST

Examines "inhibiting assumptions--textual and aesthetic, not sexual"--that the authors believe "have persisted, apparently not so much unacknowledged by ... critics, but unrecognized" in the "Calamus" cluster in Leaves of Grass; reviews previous readings of "Calamus" and explores textual issues related to Whitman's editing and rearrangement of the cluster

Herman Melville’s Copy of Thomas Beale’s The Natural History of the Sperm Whale and the Composition of Moby-Dick

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:16 PST

Two Views of Whitman in 1856: Uncollected Reviews of Leaves of Grass from the New York Daily News and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:13 PST

Presents two 1856 reviews of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass not included in Kenneth M. Price's Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews.

‘Live Oak, with Moss,’ ‘Calamus,’ and ‘Children of Adam’

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:09 PST

Composed in overlapping phases, and textually and conceptually related, Walt Whitman's "Live Oak, with Moss", "Calamus", and "Children of Adam" clusters represent the poet in his most intimate, most exposed, and most controversial postures. Whitman composed the 12-poem "Live Oak, with Moss" sequence in the late 1850s, apparently in response to a failed same-sex attachment, and not with the intent to publish it. Yet that act of private commemoration prompted a major creative impulse that produced the 45-poem "Calamus" cluster, thematically devoted to male comradeship, and his combination of old and new poems that would make up "Children of Adam" (originally "Enfans d'Adam), devoted to sex, procreation, and love of men for women. Whereas both of the larger clusters were printed in the third (1860) edition of Leaves of Grass, "Live Oak, with Moss" was never published intact by Whitman, who instead dispersed and shuffled its 12 poems among the 33 other poems of "Calamus," eliminating its narrative of love, loss, and resolution. In dismantling the shorter sequence Whitman canceled the most complex and moving account of love and heartache that had yet emerged within American literature. But in sublimating his private passion Whitman produced two longer works that would contribute powerfully to his reputation as a poet and to the complexity of his artistic achievement.

The Hymn in Moby-Dick: Melville's Adaptation of "Psalm 18"

Steven Olsen-Smith — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:47:06 PST

In "The Sermon," Chapter 9 of Moby-Dick, the hymn sung by the congregation of Whaleman’s Chapel contributes pointedly to Herman Melville’s realistic depiction of organized worship and to the thematic coherence of both chapter and work. As David H. Battenfeld first discovered, Melville’s source for the hymn is the first part of a rhymed version of the 18th Psalm (subtitled "Deliverance from despair"), printed in The Psalms and Hymns of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in North America. This is the psalter and hymnal authorized by the church of Melville's mother, Maria Gansevoort Melville, in which he was baptized.¹ Noting the book was first published "in 1789, and was expanded in 1830 and 1846," Battenfeld took his copy-text from an 1854 printing of Psalms and Hymns, apparently assuming "Psalm 18" remained unaltered from the 1789 edition up to and beyond the publication of Moby-Dick in 1851. Moreover, Battenfelds analysis addressed only the ways Melville changed the hymn "to fit the specific reference to the story of Jonah" (574); he made no effort to examine Melville’s alterations in light of ideas and images that inform Moby-Dick as a whole. But the actual setting of “Psalm 18” that Melville adopted was, in fact, not the version included in Psalms and Hymns until the book was expanded for the first time, after the synods of 1812 and 1813, and the text of this setting was altered for editions following the synods of 1831 and 1846. The textual variants allow us to narrow the range of possible editions used for the hymn in Chapter 9, where Melville’s own alterations to "Psalm 18" furnish an index to some of his most profound themes and throw crosslights on the likely influence of additional texts available to Melville at the time of composition. A combined product of source-use, influence, and representative imagery, the hymn in Moby-Dick exemplifies Melville’s thematic artistry and assimilative technique.