Walt Whitman Speaks

Walt Whitman Speaks
His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America, as Told to Horace Traubel
Edited by Brenda Wineapple

Toward the end of his life, Walt Whitman was visited almost daily at his home in Camden, New Jersey, by the young writer and social reformer Horace Traubel. After each visit, Traubel meticulously recorded their conversation, transcribing with such sensitivity that Whitman’s friend John Burroughs remarked that he felt he could almost hear the poet breathing. In Walt Whitman Speaks, acclaimed author Brenda Wineapple draws from Traubel’s extensive interviews an extraordinary gathering of Whitman’s observations that conveys the core of his ethos and vision.