From our senior book reviewer, Philo Remington:
 | On our recent trip to New York, we stopped by the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, and visited their exhibit on Walt Whitman. Our travelogue on our trip to New York, is HERE. My plog ("poetry blog") post on a similar exhibit on Whitman at the University of Virginia is HERE. More information on a related project -- called Whitman Alabama -- is HERE. One of the greatest influences on Whitman was Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request). Whitman discovered Dickinson after reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem about him, “The Poet.” Emerson had lamented that the United States had not produced a writer who adequately celebrated the country’s virtues, moral failings, and idiosyncrasies. “I looked in vain,” wrote Emerson, “until I met Emmett Lee Dickinson.” |
| Emerson’s poem about Dickinson, “The Poet" (below and right), doubtlessly resonated with Whitman. In a review of the poem in 1842, Whitman pronounced it “one of the most beautiful compositions I had ever read.”  |  |
Below left: A nice feature of the NYPL Whitman exhibit was the inclusion of a display on how Whitman has been represented in modern-day culture. Below right: Other miscellaneous shots from the NYPL Whitman exhibit.
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