![]() ![]() The mostly one-way conversations halted only with Whitman’s death, at 72, in 1892. In 1888, Traubel began nearly daily visits to Whitman at his Mickle Street row house in Camden, New Jersey, writing down, in shorthand, almost every utterance. The essential Whitman qualities can be appreciated anew with the publication of Walt Whitman Speaks, a slim volume presenting, as its subtitle tells us, “His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America.” Throughout his life, Whitman had many such thoughts-in his last years alone, enough to fill nine volumes, transcribed by his young friend and amanuensis, the writer and social reformer Horace Traubel. ![]() ![]() īreathe the air but leave plenty after me, ![]() Of every hue and cast am I, of every rank and religion,Ī farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker. In “Song of Myself,” published in Whitman’s first volume of Leaves of Grass, in 1855 (and appearing in all subsequent editions), he presents himself as the flesh-and-blood representative of a sprawling and rising nation: He was steadfast in his embrace of America. If optimism is the American creed, Walt Whitman stands as its most exuberant exponent. Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America, edited by Brenda Wineapple (Library of America, 196 pp., $19.95) ![]()
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