Whitman The Laurel Poetry Series Author:Richard Wilber (Editor) From the introduction by Leslie A. Fielder: "Surely one goal of any new selection from Whitman ought to be redemption...of that pristine poet, that "dirtiest beast," whom, in a world ever more genteel, we cannot afford to lose. A great poet who is also a great technical pioneer is s offensive as any disturber of received ideas, as upsetting as ... more »Copernicus, or Darwin, Nietzsche or Marx or Frued. And Whitman, if he is any to be read as a living poet rather than a dead one, must come to seem again as offensive as he really is"« less