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  Dear Mr Whitman,

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. Kennedy

I 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?

    Kennedy's letter | Feb. 5 '86