Part of the Writers on Writers series, Williams chose to write about Whitman’s poems, despite observing that Whitman’s life and times have been mined by so many other writers, and write about his poems he did!  In beautiful prose interspersed with many extensive quotes of the poetry, Williams pens a paean to this most American of poets, crediting Whitman with inventing an entirely new poetry—music, imagination, scope, acceptance, spirituality, and most of all beauty and relevance.  Grouping him with Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante as well as Keats, he credits him with “genius:  innovation which is quicker, more forceful, and ultimately more mysterious.”  Whitman notices, registers, and accounts for the world and death as a ‘voracious devourer of this world.”  His central theme is a sympathetic response and exuberant acceptance of the world.  He is incredibly sensual and fully accepting of sex in all of its forms, burning with self awareness, self acceptance, and self enlargement.  This is an exciting little book which fills one with admiration for both Whitman and Williams.