Essential Whitman

<p>From the introduction by Galway Kinnell: </p><p>The poems of Walt Whitman meant little to me when I read them in high school and college. Luckily when I was teaching at the University of Grenoble in my late twenties I was required to give a course on Whitman. My experience of Leaves of Grass then was intense. . . . Soon I understood that poetry could be transcendent hymn-like a cosmic song and yet remain idolatrously attached to the creatures and things of our world. . . . Once again as when I first began writing it seemed it might be possible to say everything in poetry.</p>