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.