Walt Whitman Speaks

The young journalist and reformer Horace Traubel visited Whitman nearly every day at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman liked to talk, especially about the big issues, spiritual, political - all he'd learned over seven decades of peace and war. To mark the bicentenary of Walt Whitman's death, Carcanet presents Brenda Wineapple's distillation from these conversations with the great American poet.Whitman speaks from the heart, an old man who changed the course of American poetry and, by extension, the poetries of Europe, Asia, Latin America. Here, too, is the poet's worldly side - recalling the opprobrium heaped on Leaves of Grass for its poetic risks and sexual frankness; memories of Thoreau, Emerson and Lincoln; his judgments of Shakespeare, Goethe and Tolstoy; and his sense of the Nation.

'Walt Whitman Speaks enables us to listen in to his wondrous burblings as seldom before. As consmos-centred as he is self-centred, aswirl with spiritual and carnal longings, sharp with a put-down, exalted in his rambling earthiness, he is a delight to eavesdrop upon.' Michael Glover, The Tablet

Walt Whitman (born 1819) is widely considered to be the greatest of all American poets. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, including works by the great classic writers – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as a teacher and continued to teach until 1841 when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. As well as journalism, Whitman became absorbed in poetry, writing in a unique and distinctive style. In 1855, he finished his seminal work Leaves of Grass. He died in 1892.; Brenda Wineapple is the author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise 1848-1877, a New York Times Notable Book, and White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. For Library of America, she has edited John Greenleaf Whittier: Selected Poems, volume 10 in the American Poets Project. Wineapple has received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and, most recently, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award for The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation.

To mark the bicentenary of Walt Whitman's death, Carcanet publishes a distillation from Horace Traubel's conversations with the great American poet. Whitman speaks from the heart, an old man who changed the course of American poetry and, by extension, the poetries of Europe, Asia, Latin America... A young journalist and reformer, Traubel visited him nearly every day at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman liked to talk, especially about the big issues, spiritual, political, all he'd learned over seven decades of peace and war. Traubel's meticulous transcriptions were published in nine volumes. Brenda Wineapple (Ecstatic Nation) compiled this selection: the sage, visionary, and philosopher, advocate for expansive and liberated being, stands tall. Here, too, is the poet's worldly side - recalling the opprobrium heaped on Leaves of Grass for its poetic risks and sexual frankness; memories of Thoreau, Emerson, and Lincoln; his judgments of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy; and his sense of the Nation.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.