-"At Pfaffs" Song

One of the treasures of the Gunn diaries is a bar song written by Fitz-James O’Brien about the New York bohemians titled “At Pfaff’s,” which Gunn has annotated to identify the people referenced in the song. Curiously, Walt Whitman is referred to as “the genial philosopher” at Pfaff’s, whereas William Winter is identified as “our Poet.” While many of the bohemians were enthusiastic about Whitman’s experiments with free-verse poetry, others believed that he had strayed too far from established poetic conventions and that his work would better be classified as philosophy. Gunn’s diary gives a first-hand look at the debates that surrounded Whitman’s attempts to reinvent American poetry.