Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Strassburg, Robert

Kramer, Lawrence, ed., Walt Whitman and Modern Music: War, Desire, and the Trials of Nationhood [review]

Tributes to Whitman scholar Asselineau by Folsom (93-95), Jerome Loving (95-97), Walter Grunzweig (97-98), Betsy Erkkila (98-99), M. Wynn Thomas (99-100), Kenneth M. Price (100), Robert Strassburg (100-101), and Paul Christensen (101-103)

Folsom, Ed

In Memoriam: Tributes to Roger Asselineau, 1915-2002

Tracks over twenty references to Whitman, many of them previously unrecorded, appearing in Vanity Fair during its three-and-a-half year existence and discusses the cultural significance of the journal in the context of Whitman's life and career

Scholnick, Robert

English

"An Unusually Active Market for Calamus": Whitman, Vanity Fair, and the Fate of Humor in a Time of War, 1860-1863

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 19, no. 3/4

Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 19, no. 3/4

Loving, Jerome

ANNOUNCEMENTS 
I IN MEMORIAM: EDWIN HAVILAND MILLER I 
Just before Christmas 2000 I received a card from Rosalind Miller, Edwin 
Haviland Miller's wife. I had sent her and Ed our annual holiday greetings, 
not knowing exactly Ed's medical condition. I knew that he was suffering 
from Alzheimer's Disease, but I hadn't heard anything more until Roz's card 
arrived. "Sorry to report," she wrote in a shaky hand, "last couple of years not 
good. I'm doing fine after cancer episode, except for writing, but Ed in nurs-
ing home, Alzheimer's. But we had 55 wonderful years! Enjoy yours!" Edwin 
Haviland Miller died on September 17,2001, at the age of eighty-three. 
I first corresponded with Ed Miller in the early 1970s. I was editing the 
Civil War letters of George Washington Whitman and had asked about living 
relatives who might have relevant documents or even letters. He mentioned 
the existence of a Walt Whitman Swertfager either in upstate New York or out 
on the tip of Long Island, where Whitman's sister Mary had lived. Apparently, 
Swertfager knew nothing about Whitman; furthermore, Ed advised me against 
contacting him in case he or another relative smelled money in my book (which 
there wasn't!). I later met Miller at MLA meetings, mainly through Gay Wil-
son Allen, whom I always viewed as Ed's Whitman mentor, though I'm not 
sure Ed would agree with that description of the relationship. They were great 
friends and colleagues at New York University, where Ed taught after fourteen 
years in the English Department at Simmons College. Ed was around fifteen 
years younger than Gay, who died in 1995 at the age of ninety-three. 
In the late 1970s, while I was living in Conco'rd, Massachusetts, one sum-
mer and conducting research for my book on Emerson, Whitman, and the Ameri-
can Muse, my wife Cathy and I drove up to Rockport to have dinner with the 
Millers. Before dining we swam in one of the nearby stone quarries, which 
were black and deep. Ed and Roz had rented the same summer home in 
Rockport for many years. The dinner was exquisite, and Cathy has been mak-
ing Roz's spinach and zucchini gazpacho ever since. I also dined once with 
Roger Asselineau at the Miller home in Riverdale, New York. After walking up 
what seemed like half of Manhattan to the Metropolitan Museum, Roger and 
I took the subway to the end of the line in Riverdale, where Ed was waiting for 
us. It was another great dinner, but I observed that Ed, then about eighty, had 
begun to show some signs oflifetime wear. In his study, I noted the Hawthorne 
volumes, which were soiled by so many consultations during the writing of his 
biography of Hawthorne, Salem Is My Dwelling Place (1991). Among his many 
Whitman publications was the masterful "mosaic of interpretations" of "Song 
of Myself" (1989). For critical and psychological insights at their best, there 
is his walt Whitman's Poetry: A Psychological Journey (1968). And he edited 
several influential Whitman volumes, including A Century ofWhitman Criticism 
(1969), TheArtistic Legacy oJWaltWhitman (1970, a tribute to Gay Allen on his 
retirement from New York University), and the Selected Letters oJwaltWhitman 
199 
(1990) . 
. But the grandest scholarly accomplishment for this Harvard Ph.D. (his dis-
sertation was in English Renaissance studies) is the six-volume WUlt Whitman: 
The Correspondence (1961-1977), so thoroughly and accurately annotated as 
to constitute a living biography of the poet. As a Whitman scholar for many 
years and the author of the latest biography, I can attest to the absolute reli-
ability of this monumental work. Ed continued to work on collecting stray 
Whitman letters, adding a supplement to his six volumes with a special double 
issue of WWQR in 1991 that gathered nearly fifty newly discovered letters. 
Ed's work continues to be built upon and added to: we will keep finding more 
letters (as Ted Genoways's collection in this issue of WWQR amply demon-
strates), but Ed's edition remains the foundation and main structure. 
Edwin Haviland Miller recharted the landscape for Whitman scholars and 
along the way wrote on other major figures in American (as well as English) 
literature, including a controversial biography of Melville (1975). At the time 
he was stricken with Alzheimer's he was hard at work on a biography of Frank 
Norris. He was an eminent scholar, an excellent writer, and a good friend. 
-JEROME LOVING 
THE RETURN OF THE MICKLE STREET REVIEW 
Camden was originally an accidentJ but I shall never be sorry I was left over in 
Camden. It has brought me blessed returns. -Walt Whitman 
Named for the street in Camden, New Jersey, on which Whitman lived for the 
last eight years of his life, The Mickle Street Review, a peer-reviewed electronic 
journal published by the English department at Rutgers University-Camden 
in cooperation with the Walt Whitman Program in American Studies, seeks to 
re-imagine Whitman's place in the American scene and investigate through 
various media the issues that . he raised in his poetry and prose. Edited by 
Tyler Hoffman, an assistant professor of American literature and cultural stud-
ies, along with J.T. Barbarese, an assistant professor of creative writing and 
American literature, MSR features some of the best and most exciting work 
currently being done in the fields of Whitman Studies and American Studies, 
with a focus on the region in which Whitman lived and worked, from New 
York City to Washington, D.C., centering on his home in Camden. The journal's 
mix of poetry, fiction, essays, archival documents, reviews, and visual art seeks 
to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges among creative writers, artists, teach-
ers, and scholars interested in American literature and culture in Whitman's 
day and beyond. 
The Mickle Street Review was begun in 1979 by Geoffrey Sill and Frank 
McQuilkin as a joint project of the Walt Whitman House, a State of New Jer-
sey historic site, and Rutgers University in Camden. The journal ceased pub-
lication in 1991 for financial reasons. In its new electronic incarnation, The 
Mickle Street Review (http://www.micklestreet.rutgers.edu) supports both the 
American Studies and the creative writing programs at the graduate and un-
dergraduate schools of Rutgers-Camden and continues in its alliance with the 
200 


In Memoriam: Edwin Haviland Miller

Sill, Geoffrey

Hoffman, Tyler

(1990) . 
. But the grandest scholarly accomplishment for this Harvard Ph.D. (his dis-
sertation was in English Renaissance studies) is the six-volume WUlt Whitman: 
The Correspondence (1961-1977), so thoroughly and accurately annotated as 
to constitute a living biography of the poet. As a Whitman scholar for many 
years and the author of the latest biography, I can attest to the absolute reli-
ability of this monumental work. Ed continued to work on collecting stray 
Whitman letters, adding a supplement to his six volumes with a special double 
issue of WWQR in 1991 that gathered nearly fifty newly discovered letters. 
Ed's work continues to be built upon and added to: we will keep finding more 
letters (as Ted Genoways's collection in this issue of WWQR amply demon-
strates), but Ed's edition remains the foundation and main structure. 
Edwin Haviland Miller recharted the landscape for Whitman scholars and 
along the way wrote on other major figures in American (as well as English) 
literature, including a controversial biography of Melville (1975). At the time 
he was stricken with Alzheimer's he was hard at work on a biography of Frank 
Norris. He was an eminent scholar, an excellent writer, and a good friend. 
-JEROME LOVING 
THE RETURN OF THE MICKLE STREET REVIEW 
Camden was originally an accidentJ but I shall never be sorry I was left over in 
Camden. It has brought me blessed returns. -Walt Whitman 
Named for the street in Camden, New Jersey, on which Whitman lived for the 
last eight years of his life, The Mickle Street Review, a peer-reviewed electronic 
journal published by the English department at Rutgers University-Camden 
in cooperation with the Walt Whitman Program in American Studies, seeks to 
re-imagine Whitman's place in the American scene and investigate through 
various media the issues that . he raised in his poetry and prose. Edited by 
Tyler Hoffman, an assistant professor of American literature and cultural stud-
ies, along with J.T. Barbarese, an assistant professor of creative writing and 
American literature, MSR features some of the best and most exciting work 
currently being done in the fields of Whitman Studies and American Studies, 
with a focus on the region in which Whitman lived and worked, from New 
York City to Washington, D.C., centering on his home in Camden. The journal's 
mix of poetry, fiction, essays, archival documents, reviews, and visual art seeks 
to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges among creative writers, artists, teach-
ers, and scholars interested in American literature and culture in Whitman's 
day and beyond. 
The Mickle Street Review was begun in 1979 by Geoffrey Sill and Frank 
McQuilkin as a joint project of the Walt Whitman House, a State of New Jer-
sey historic site, and Rutgers University in Camden. The journal ceased pub-
lication in 1991 for financial reasons. In its new electronic incarnation, The 
Mickle Street Review (http://www.micklestreet.rutgers.edu) supports both the 
American Studies and the creative writing programs at the graduate and un-
dergraduate schools of Rutgers-Camden and continues in its alliance with the 
200 
Walt Whitman House. It is part of the Camden On-line Poetry Project, an 
umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of several related on-line 
publishing projects sponsored by the Rutgers-Camden English department. 
For its part, MSR features in its first on-line issue a variety of pieces high-
lighting the theme of museums and memoirs, two important cultural forms in 
the framing of American history and in discussions of Whitman in and as 
history. Issues of identity, memory, and performance, which are integrally 
related to these forms, are taken up, teased out, and figured in a range of texts. 
Focusing on the connections between a poet and the place that he or she 
inhabits, the issue draws on the knowledge and experience of the curators of 
regional historical societies and historic sites to show how such places may 
help the public to interpret the poet's work. While some of the pieces in the 
issue are squarely about Whitman and his experiences in the world, others are 
tangential to Whitman, offering windows into American life and letters in the 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 
From the start, the mission of MSR was to provide common ground for 
readers with an interest in Walt Whitman or the subjects that he wrote about. 
The new electronic MSR will be even broader in scope, seeking to initiate a 
dialogue among diverse speakers and audiences who might otherwise not come 
into contact with each other. Spinning out filaments of its own, this time 
through a web much wider than that available to Whitman, The Mickle Street 
Review will connect people who may have nothing in common except to have 
been, at some point, lifted out of themselves byWhitman's overwhelming power. 
To have read Whitman, even once, is to join a vast network whose members, 
from the least to the most famous, have much to say to each other. The mis-
sion of The Mickle Street Review is to be the forum in which that dialogue 
happens. 
-GEOFFREY SILL AND TYLER HOFFMAN 
201 


The Return of The Mickle Street Review

Explores "Whitman's role in shaping James's thought" and evaluates "Whitman's place in the pragmatist tradition," emphasizing the role of aesthetics in pragmatism and offering a pragmatic reading of "Song of the Broad-Axe" based on "Jamesian pluralism.

Allison, Raphael C

Walt Whitman, William James, and Pragmatist Aesthetics

Hutchinson, George

Schmidgall, Gary, ed., Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman's Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1882-1892 [review]

Prints thirty-three previously unpublished Whitman letters, with an introduction by Genoways (123-127) and an "Addenda to the Calendar of Letters Written to Whitman" (145-147)

Not a member yet