Title: The First Dandelion
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: March 12, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: per.00114
Source: New York Herald 12 March 1888: 4. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, April Lambert, and Susan Belasco
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[FOR THE NEW YORK HERALD.]
1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]
2. Rather inconveniently for Whitman, "The First Dandelion," which hearkens the coming of spring, appeared in the Herald on 12 March 1888, just one day before a tremendous blizzard hit New York and the coast. The snow-bound took their ire out on Whitman in poems of their own: "The First Blizzard," signed "After Walt Whitman," appeared in the Herald on 14 March, and a second poem, "Served Him Right," was printed in the same column the next day. The Herald also reprinted responses from other newspapers about Whitman and the poem, including a note from the Buffalo Express on 18 March, which explained how New Yorkers passed their time during the blizzard: "by printing poems of Walt Whitman's on such seasonable themes as 'The First Dandelion.' We join Walt in admiration for dandelion salad." [back]