![]() ![]() In the words of one critic, until well into his 30s, "Whitman was a non-poet in every way, with no mark of special talent or temperament". Until Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman was heroically unpromising – a carpenter, a schoolteacher, a printer and journalist, and the author of a "temperance" novel. The mystery of Walt Whitman, explored in the latest New York Review of Books, goes deeper still. Only now is Walt Whitman generally recognised as the artist who invented American poetry and gave his people an authentic lyric voice with Leaves of Grass as surely as Mark Twain created American fiction with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. ![]() When, at the age of 36, the poet first self-published the collection for which he would become famous, it received just two reviews, both written by himself under a pseudonym, but otherwise fell stillborn from the press. ![]()
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