One of the strongest features of Deutsch's biography of Walt Whitman is its extensive selection of more than 100 pages of his poems "arranged so as to present his own life-story." This section of the book is followed by a chapter-by-chapter listing of the poems that correspond, in Deutsch's view, to particular periods in the poet's life. Even for a poet as open and personal as Whitman, to assume the direct autobiographical equivalence of poetry and the poet's life is questionable, but Deutsch's choices are certainly useful as a guide to correspondences between incident and art. She used the material on Whitman available in 1940 to try to tell the story of the poet's life and work, whenever possible, from the perspective of the subject himself. Deutsch often uses the rhythms and images of Whitman's own writing to try to convey the mood of his thinking. Frequently, she...