Sourced from the dust cover flaps (image provided):
Although Walt Whitman is know primarily by the last edition of Leaves of Grass (1891 - 1892), almost all of the important poems were composed before 1860. After this date, Whitman adopted a less personal voice and often revised or deleted passages in the early poems that revealed the personal origins of his poems. Stephen A. Black combines psychoanalytic, historical, and literary methods to study the development of Whitman's poetic process during his most productive period.