An episode from 11/10/20: Tonight, I read Walt Whitman's 1863 letter to the parents of Erastus Haskell. Haskell was wounded during the Civil War, and was befriended and cared for by Whitman in one of the many Washington, D.C., hospitals that the poet frequented. Haskell eventually died of his wounds.

The letter can be found in the best account of Whitman’s life during the Civil War, Roy Morris Jr.’s The Better Angel: Walt Whitman & the Civil War.

Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].