Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 26 May [1883]
Date: May 26, 1883
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00773
Source: The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:339. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, and Nicole Gray
Camden
May 26
I congratulate you on the live and telling piece in to-day's C[ritic]. It is the best paper that has appeared at any time in that Weekly1—I am well—
W W
1. Kennedy's "The Obsolescence of Barrel-Organ Poetry," which appeared in The Critic on May 26, attacked conventional rhyme and meter in poetry, and praised the new freedom in the music and poetry of Wagner and Walt Whitman. See also the letter from Whitman to Kennedy of May 31, 1883. [back]