We talked some over a Rossetti letter which W. produced and gave to me. He asked me to read it. “Why do you have me read all these things, Walt? ” I asked him: ” You know I’m nothing of a reader.” W. said: “There are two reasons—1st, I like to hear your voice: 2d, I like to hear these letters, such things, back in the voice of another.”

Then he said: ” I often read them aloud to myself: I like to read them in a palpable voice: I try my poems that way—always have: read them aloud to myself: I seem to get a new angle on them—see things I could not see in any other way. [italics added]

— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 3 ((November 1, 1888-January 20, 1889), pg. 375

— posted by Roger W Smith

  November 2023