Walt Whitman : Poet Of Democracy
A Biogaphy by Babette Deutsch
As a young woman I came upon these words of Walt Whitman:
Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, selfesteem, definiteness, elevatedness,
Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality.
These lines stirred me so that I started reading Whitman from cover to cover, and have done so over and over again for more than fifty years, finding in him courage to stand for my own truth, my personality, and all that I hold dear in life.
It is therefore for me a profound satisfaction that this remarkable biography of him has won my award.
Julia Ellsworth Ford