Specimen Days & Collect

Rating:
Summary: "...as we get to Walt with his masks removed."
Review: Holding a very special place among Whitman's writing, & very unlike anything by Thoreau, Specimen Days is as close as we get to Walt with his masks removed. There is something of a suburbanite in Whitman's appreciation of nature; essentially, he simply went, looked around & wrote down what he saw & what he did. Force of nature that he was, what he mostly saw was, of course, himself. Nature is benign. The Civil War entries are famous. The real war, which Whitman said would never get in the books, makes an appearance in the sad hospitals he visited.

Specimen Days is an inspiring message to us. Whitman knew we would be here.

Bob Rixon