
Good news! The book on you wh. I had been contemplating for some years is coming bravely to the birth. It has burst from me as from a ripe pomegranate its seeds, come from me with throes. I have been 2 weeks in a fever of parturition & have gone over all the notes writings, & literature of my past life in relentless search for material to enrich the book on my hero. (It ought to be studded with jewels & written on gold & silver in yr honor.) The longer I live the more I understand & grow up to yr incomparable poems. I have made a 25 p. bibliography of you. Be sure to hunt around now,—that's a good boy—& send me articles or references to articles &c wh. you think will help to make any bibliog complete. I have already I shd think nearly a hundred entries.
Please don't tell anyone of my project yet—wd you?

I have spent two days unearthing the Oliver Stevens matter. I find Oliver to be a capital Pfaafian fellow, generous & free & entirely innocent—a mere cat's paw for others. I have discovered the real instigator, & it forms a very pretty piece of business. I am going to put him in the stocks for all time.
I am working out the grouping & laws of yr poetry.
But my chief object is to propagandize. I am going to address the American People (not the damned & twice damned
literary & clerical rascals). It's my firm belief that if these scoundrels could
be passed—their scowling ranks—you cd reach the people—your true audience. I have constructed a chain of
proofs of yr rank in the Valhalla of great men, which I am going to present in a
temperate, calm & persuasive way. Then in Part II, I make an analysis of the
poems & all their vast implications & ancillary topics: this Part will of
course be for the Whitman fellows throughout the world.
Knortz has been at me twice to make this book, & I hope you will not be displeased, & also hope my time will not be taken up but that I can finish it soon. But I am going to read widely and deeply for it. Dr. Bucke's book's is invaluable, but it lacks profundity & literary knack in its treatment of the work (analysis) & estimate of the problems involved. In fact I find it quite inadequate in these respects.
What wd you say to having the book, when completed, brought out simultaneously in Glasgow & New York? I shd thus get copyright in both countries. Do you think I will have much trouble in getting publisher? If Wilson & McCormick wd co-operate the expense cd be halved, I suppose.
aff. yrs W. S. KennedyI am about to pub. a Ruskin anthology.
Notice of Poet as Craftsman rec'd . Thank you.

I have I believe come to complete agreement with you on the Children of Adam question—reached yr attitude & absolute point of view. My Puritan training as a Calvinistic ministers son hindered it for a long time.
I have already added one third more to my essay on Poet as Craftsman.
¶ I shd like extremely to get the names of noble women-friends of you & yr poems. I only have now Mrs Gilchrist (noble heart, hail & farewell) Nora Perry, May Cole Baker, Mrs Ritter, Helen Price, Mrs Bigelow, [S. A(?)]

¶ I did not see, & do not know where appeared yr "As One by One The Lofty Actors," & poem on Washington Monument. I believe otherwise I have yr poems as pub.
¶ Do you expect to get out soon the volume you are preparing?


