Ok so one thing I genuinely liked were him being extremely horny all the time, a true bi/pansexual, including like trees, mountains; you name it, Walt Whitman can be turned on by it. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect going into this, and was intrigued to read that this was basically his response to Thoreau putting a call out for a national poet for the U.S.A. And he was like hold my beer I’m going to self publish this thing then never let it rest. Mainly I was extremely jarred upon reading the first item in the collection, pages and pages of prose chaos which were basically the settler’s wet dream. Glorious descriptions of the land without a people, now peopled by so many others. He really tries to sell it, and god it makes me sick, made me want to go and read about Walt Whitman and manifest destiny. This coloured the experience of reading the whole rest of the book for me. Shame. A true liberal in that he’s like why can’t we all just get along, the master and the slave, and also you’re all hot.