Whitman's Presence

"Nathanson addresses with renewed insight a problem that has vexed Whitman scholars at least since James E. Miller, Jr.''s A Critical Guide to Leaves of Grass turned Whitman into a respectable academic subject; that is, the unusual status of Whitman''s poetic voice. . . . The overall result is the finest articulation of Whitman''s project in existence."
—Donald Pease, Department of English, Dartmouth College
"What enables Nathanson to perform a feat no other critic has accomplished depends as much on his awareness of a range of thinkers from Wittgenstein to J.L. Austin and Derrida as on his sense of the qualities of poetry: he gives the term presence a cultural as well as poetic significance which opens out to cultural history, and makes Whitman as much a representative presence in the culture as our unequalled poet. I see this as a central book about our literature."
—Quentin Anderson, J.C. Levi Professor in the Humanities Emeritus, Columbia University