Walt Whitman
“In our enthusiasm and excitement we welcomed back all the forgotten or discredited dreamers, from William Blake to Lewis Carroll, from the American Indian to Walt Whitman. Out of the overwhelming materialism of the fifties we tried to institute the abiding power of the spiritual, and we were not talking about going to church.” (From ETHAN RUSSELL:AN AMERICAN STORY )
I remember reading (or trying to, more likely) Leaves of Grass in college. But for whatever reason, Whitman stuck in my consciousness as a figure from early, early American history. Hey, he could have Biblical. So it came as an extraordinary surprise to find him quoted and shown in Ken Burn’s Civil War.
For more, Wikipedia.
