Williams on Whitman

On Whitman by Pulitzer prize-winning poet C. K. Williams is part critical analysis and part ode of appreciation. Williams mostly reminds us of all there is to love about Whitman, though he does point out that the poet wasn’t perfect. Whitman fiddled with Leaves of Grass throughout his life and could’ve used a good editor here and there.

Jack Goodstein breaks down On Whitman in the Seattle PI:

While there is some biographical information, it is very limited, the kind of thing you might get in an introduction to a collection of his poems. On Whitman focuses on the poetry. Williams organizes the book around general themes; each theme treated in short chapters usually with a fair selection of quotations to illustrate the points he is trying to make. Themes include "America," "Voice," "Sex," "Nature," "Immortality," along with many others. Whitman has much to say on many subjects. Williams compares his work with contemporaries like Baudelaire and Longfellow. He compares Whitman's treatment of themes with that of other poets. Whitman, for example, is more precise in his natural imagery, than a poet like Shelley. Tennyson's elegiac mode is limited to one note; Whitman is more expansive in his Lincoln elegies. He discusses his influence on modern poets like Ginsberg, Lorca, T.S. Eliot and Pound among those best known. He focuses on the unique voice, the American voice that Whitman created for himself . . .