Happy Birthday, Walter Whitman
  • Walter Whitman

    Walter Whitman

    Walter (“Walt”) Whitman, perhaps America’s only guru, turned 195-years-old today.

    He is unquestionably America’s most famous and most quintessential poet — who is second, I would add, only to Emily Dickenson as the most overrated.

    Walter Whitman, who opened the closet but wouldn’t come out; who lived in a kind of luxurious poverty — housekeeper, male nurse, amanuensis, carriage, on the bounty of admirers, adored as Ghandi or a Dr. Schweitzer, visited by Oscar Wilde and English titles, in Camden, New Jersey: Two-hundred pound of hype, nature-mystic who designed his tomb solid as an Egyptian pyramid, American to the soles of his boots, outspoken as Christ or Madame Blavatsky, Messiah, Muse of the Modern …

    R.I.P.






About The Author

Ray Harvey

I was born and raised in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. I've worked as a short-order cook, construction laborer, crab fisherman, janitor, bartender, pedi-cab driver, copyeditor, and more. I've written and ghostwritten several published books and articles, but no matter where I've gone or what I've done to earn my living, there's always been literature and learning at the core of my life.

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