Walt Whitman Book Talk — January 4

Mark your calendars — On January 4, the Washington Friends of Whitman are hosting a book talk by Michael Robertson, author of Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples. The event is from 4-6 p.m. at a member's house. Join Cyber Walt for more information and to RSVP, or tag along with me.

There will be refreshments, including champagne, of which it turns out that Whitman is a huge aficionado.

So reports Horace Traubel, author of Walt Whitman in Camden, a nine-volume biography of Whitman's final four years:

W. laughed when we referred to the dinner, "I can't forget about the champagne, Horace, the iced champagne: how straight it went to the heart of the matter—to my need—setting up the whole night! To know what I know about the condition in which I went downstairs—then to know how the champagne lifted me! It is the explication of much! A year ago or so I tried to write some lines about champagne, but they did not satisfy me. I like things that possess more than a surface meaning, and somehow I stuck on this—could not throw out the suggestion I was after. But it will come, someday—by and by—perhaps."