SOURCE: Hutchinson, George B. “Langston Hughes and the ‘Other’ Whitman.” In The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman, edited by Robert K. Martin, pp. 16-27. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Hutchinson traces relationships between the works of Langston Hughes and nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman.

By the “other” Whitman in my title I have in mind two distinct but related concepts. One comes from the title of an article published by Leandro Wolfson in 1978, “The Other Whitman in Spanish America,” in which Wolfson criticizes the continued adoration of Whitman in Latin America, pointing out the inaccuracies in the Hispanic view of the North American poet. This “other” Whitman has been debunked and/or repressed (depending upon how you look at it) in the United States since the 1950s as part of the effort to bring his poetry into the academy during an era...