"I like the freedom that Walt Whitman was using to play with and shape the American language. Especially in writing Tripmaster Monkey-I just lifted lines from Leaves of Grass. You would think they were modern Sixties' slang-"Trippers and Askers" and "Linguists and Contenders Surround Me"-all of that-"Song of the Open Road," "Song of Occupations"-I just took those for title headings for my book. I like the rhythm of his language and the freedom and the wildness of it. It's so American. And also his vision of a new kind of human being that was going to be formed in this country-although he never specifically said Chinese-ethnic Chinese also I'd like to think he meant all kinds of people. And also I love that throughout Leaves of Grass he always says "men and women," "male and female." He's so different from other writers of his time, and even of this time. Even a hundred years ago he always included women and he always used [those phrases], "men and women," "male and female.""
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesJournalists from the United States19th-century poets from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
1990 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman
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Walt Whitman
1819 – 1892
US-amerikanischer Dichter
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