SOURCE: “Louis Simpson and Walt Whitman,” in On Louis Simpson: Depths Beyond Happiness, edited by Hank Lazer, University of Michigan Press, 1988, pp. 275–302.

In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Lazer examines Simpson's assimilation of Whitman's poetic themes, style, and voice, and Simpson's subsequent effort to come to terms with Whitman's influence after rejecting his overly idealized vision of America.

With regard to recent American poetry, it is easy and fruitful to trace the influence of Walt Whitman. Particularly with the revolution in style that began in the mid-fifties with Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems and that continued in the early sixties with Robert Bly's Silence in the Snowy Fields, Whitman has been seen as a congenial poetic mentor and model for a wide range of American poets. Ginsberg, for example, was drawn to Whitman for a number of reasons: Whitman's metrics and use of the long line...