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Synopsis
"That Whitman imagined himself to be at heart a religious visionary is as clear as day, but this spiritual striving has been repeatedly obscured in his literary canonization. The concealment of religion has been even more pronounced through the neglect of Whitman's most devoted admirers. Michael Robertson's Worshipping Walt brilliantly recovers the religious world that Whitman generated through Leaves of Grass and beautifully unveils the "Whitmanites" in all their social, erotic, and creative complexity."--Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality
"Whitman's nineteenth-century worshippers have long hovered in biographies of the poet like so many ghosts, always there but barely visible. In this well-researched book, Michael Robertson brings them passionately alive. The would-be lovers (male and female), the mystics, social reformers, starry-eyed teenagers, and jaded truthseekers--all attracted by Whitman's rapturous poetry and personal magnetism--come sharply into focus in Robertson's book, which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the poet's world."--David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman's America
"'I stop somewhere waiting for you,' Whitman says in the last line of 'Song of Myself.' Michael Robertson gives us the stories of readers who, in Whitman's own lifetime, took him at his word. This informative and highly readable book is a window onto the world of Whitman's early readers. It teaches us how devoted they were to him, and how they read his poetry in a religious idiom, as a new kind of devotion. Illuminating and personal, it gives us Whitman anew through the eyes of these disciples who knew him."--Michael Warner, Yale University
"An illuminating look at some of the people who knew Whitman and saw him as a new spiritual leader, Worshipping Walt is an outstanding book--clear, beautifully written, insightful, and informative."--Ed Folsom, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
"Worshipping Walt is an important book. It clarifies the development of Whitman's reputation, highlights the nature of his key friendships, and illuminates his ongoing significance as a spiritual force."--Kenneth M. Price, author of To Walt Whitman, America
Michael Redmond - Princeton Packet
Michael Robertson has written a fascinating book on those who thought of themselves as nearest and dearest to Walt Whitman—incontestably 'America's greatest poet'. We've seen quite a few substantial biographies of Whitman, and they score the various points their authors intended to score, but Mr. Robertson's book takes a new and altogether refreshing direction by introducing us, in some depth, to Whitman's true-blue disciples. Mr. Robertson illuminates...the poet's enduring appeal over the generations [and] has written a rich, memorable book. He wears his considerable erudition lightly, and he writes like a dream.