Specimen Days in America

"Specimen Days" sets out to celebrate Whitman as he glorified himself - as a persona of cosmic proportions and a poet of universal sympathies. Far more than a diary or a series of random jottings, this book provides contact with a poet's mind at its source; with youth, middle and old age; with intense and lyric observations of a nation at war and peace; a changing, vigorous people and an expanding continent.