Description
Book SynopsisIn From Noon to Starry Night, published on the 100th anniversary of Walt Whitman's death, the great poet of democracy has at last found his biographer. Philip Callow brings to Whitman's extraordinary life the skills and sensitivities of novelist, poet, and biographer. Here is the life of America's poet—beguiling, surprising, in some ways magical—a wonderfully detailed portrait, lyrically told. More successfully than any earlier biography, Callow's has captured Whitman's elusive truth. Drawing upon a broad range of sources, and quoting liberally from Whitman's poems, Callow has re-created the poet's life in all its roundness and intricate corners, "smiling evasively in his thicket of identities." Tradesman, teacher, buccaneer journalist, suddenly a poet; a man who loved crowds yet was fundamentally a solitary, with a sexual fluidity that remains a riddle to this day, Whitman was, Callow observes, a democrat who set out to imagine the life of the average man in average circumstances changed into something grand and heroic. "The sheer certainty of his voice can still astonish us,'' the author writes. He has brought Whitman alive again in this perceptive and evocative biography. With 8 pages of photographs.
Trade ReviewInteresting and well written...admiring but objective. * Publishers Weekly *
Callow is a writer who feels life, smells it, eats and drinks it, draws it up through the soles of his shoes. -- John Wain
His prose is clear and easy and elegant, his observations sharp but kind and never superficial. -- V.S Naipaul
A readable, thoughtful homage...Callow is as much Whitman's champion here as biographer! -- Chris Goodrich * Los Angeles Times *
An excellent biography...not only a splendid portrait of this major American poet but a riveting, detailed history as well. -- Bill Mahin * Chicago Tribune *
