"Green Leaves and Dry Leaves": The Variorum Whitman
Raymond Nelson
Admirers have long juxtaposed two images of Walt Whitman as artist and craftsman. In the one he himself loved and promoted, he is spontaneous, inspired, and prophetic—uttering poems, as Tu Fu said of Li Po, as unself-consciously and naturally as a bird soars. In the other, he is like some finicky old god (as Li Po suggested of
