About the Author

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892), an American poet, essayist, and journalist, was born on Long Island and educated in Brooklyn, New York. He worked as a teacher, government clerk, and journalist and volunteered as a nurse caring for wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

JOHN HOLLANDER was the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and eight books of criticism, including the award-winning Rhyme's Reason- A Guide to English Verse. He taught at Connecticut College and Yale and was a professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. In 1990 he received a MacArthur Fellowship. He died in August 2013.

Reviews

"Whitman's best poems have that permanent quality of being freshly painted, of not being dulled by the varnish of the years." --Malcolm Cowley