Complete Prose Works collects Whitman's non-poetic writing in one volume. It includes Specimen Days, with its war memories and nature notes, along with essays on democracy, literature and the American language, and his prefaces to Leaves of Grass. Together the pieces explain his ideas about poetry, the common people and the future of the United States. They also show a sociable, observant writer at work in a plainer voice than his verse.
Quotes
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.