This introductory guide to Walt Whitman weaves together thewriter’s life with an examination of his works. · An innovative introductory guide to Walt Whitman

Offers advice on writing essays about the poetry of Walt Whitman and lists sample topics.

"Explores the meaning of blacks and blackness in Whitman's imagination and, equally significant, also illuminates the aura of Whitman in African American letter

“Wonderful . . . a timely invitation to political and social theorists to take seriously this imaginative man who solicited us to think and sing democracy.”

Shortly after the third edition of Leaves of Grass was published, in 1860, Walt Whitman seemed to drop off the literary map, not to emerge again until his broth