This is the America Iliad. Walt Whitman is absolutely Homeric. He is positively mythological. Despite the fact that we know quite specifically when he wrote, and often the very events which inspired his writing, his verse has the quality of a time-before-time. The Declaration of Independence may be our founding document, but this is our epic. It has a kind of etiological quality about it, as if he were describing our origins. Homer sang of the anger of Achilles; Whitman sings of himself, and Everyman, but especially the American Columbia. He belongs to this land as Adam belongs to the dust. He is sprung from these United States the way dwarves might spring out of rocks. Indeed I would not be surprised to find moss in his hair, pine needles in his beard, soil between his toes, bark flaking from his skin, or sap and sea in his blood. He sings of the Individual! He sings of Nature! He sings of the Sea! He sings of Equality and Freedom and War! If it were not for their famed breviloquence "One Hour to Madness and Joy!" might have been a Spartan battle-song for the measured march of war. I could not read it in silence. There bubbled up in me a shout and I could not but "sound my barbaric yawp" while chanting it aloud! How did I ever turn aside from Leaves of Grass? Somehow, years ago, I read very few of these pages and was unenthused. This time his verse descended upon me like some Himalayan cataract. I suppose that sometimes we just aren't ready. Here's to Walt Whitman and 2019! P.S. 75 books this year makes a new record for me. Very serious doubts I'll even come close next year. Cheers!