Specimen Days

I stumbled across this beautiful book while I was searching for the Walt Whitman collection that shares its name, and I had no idea what to expect from it. As it turned out, I fell for it hard. This is (these are?) three novellas set in Whitman's beloved New York, past, present, and future, and linked by the same three characters reincarnating in each disparate narrative. Whitman's poetry and themes loom large throughout the whole book and his unexpected appearance and Cunningham's characterisation of him made me cry like a wean.