At the slam, he reminded the aspiring poets that, "you got to know the greats before you become great; read Shakespeare, read Whitman, read Ginsburg."

Ginsberg, who was born in Newark in 1926 and grew up in Paterson, read both Whitman and Williams as "local poets," Professor Hoffman said.

Mr. Ignatow added that reading Whitman again after he retired opened new vistas.

Or read Whitman or Eliot?

Seven high-school boys at a stern prep school sneak off to a midnight-dark cave to read Whitman and Thoreau.

He never did; instead he read widely - Elizabethan drama, Whitman and the French symbolists.

I wonder whether Trent Lott, who recently compared homosexuals to compulsive thieves, has ever read Whitman or Proust or Auden.

Then I read Whitman, both his prose and poetry.

I was reading Thoreau and Whitman.

An erratic autodidact, Campana taught himself functional French, German and English- enough to read the Symbolists and Whitman in the original languages.