Poetry by Walt Whitman, book design by Lawrence Jay Switzer. Large format 12" x 12", illustrated, printed on heavyweight artists' stock. This volume of the Walt Whitman Series, gathers together many of the poems that Whitman wrote about the sea and those who live on it and around it. Born surrounded by water on America’s largest island, Long Island (or Paumanok, the aboriginal name by which he often referred to it), Whitman was forever attracted to the deeps and shallows, the flowing and the still, writing extensively about his travels on the Mississippi, Niagara, the Great Lakes, the Hudson and East Rivers, and the bustling harbor of New York City, with its visual pandemonium of tall-masted sailing vessels, ocean liners, pilot boats, and ferries. The poet lived most of his life during the final years of the whaling era, when the sea still represented mystery and danger and the possibility of long separation from the familiar. The limitless oceans also represented freedom from the constrictions and prejudices imposed on land, opportunity, adventure, and a socially acceptable route of escape from worldly cares. All these elements find their way into this poetic chowder-pot. Prefaced by an essay by the designer: “Sea Poems In The Golden Age of Whaling.” Illustrated with period photos and engravings.