Walt Whitman: EVergreen Profile Book 19

NY: Grove Press. VG PB. (1961). Since 1868 Whitman had been descending from the "high plateau" reached about that time, before long it would become a . toboggan slide. Primarily the chief difficulty was his health but also in the summer of 1870 he was also emotionally disturbed about some experience or situation which is still a mystery to biographers though they have advanced many theories. On July 15, 1870, sitting at his desk in the Attorney General's office, Whitman scribbled a notation in ink and pencil, using two colors of each (facsimile of note included). Whitman had also written these words about himself, "...an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos. Disorderly fleshy and sensual...eating drinking and breeding. No sentimentalist...no stander above men and women or apart from them...no more modest than immodest." Whitman was "the first American poet to celebrate all humanity and to prophesy that the special destiny of America is the fulfillment of the sacred self of each individual. A democrat in the broadest sense, he was a prophet without honor in his own time because the candor of his verse and his emphasis on the importance of the 'fleshy and sensual" offended many of his contemporaries." There is also a facsimile of a page titled Chants Democratic that has Whitman's revisions on it. Chockful of information about the poet and the man. Whitman alleged he had six children, two dead, there was never any trace of them found. Remainder mark on bottom fore-edge, owner name in pencil on front endpaper. .