A Prairie Sunset

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of A Prairie Sunset by Walt Whitman. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 28, 2011.

Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "poet of democracy", a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman, Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." (summary from Wikipedia)