-Willa Cather

The American novelist Willa Cather wrote extensively about immigrant life and pioneer experience in the American Midwest. Her most famous novel, O Pioneers! (1913), is named for Whitman’s 1865 poem “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” Cather claimed that Whitman—along with Henry James—was among her greatest literary influences, but she could also playfully tease his eccentricities as a poet: “If a joyous elephant should break forth into song, his lay would probably be very much like Whitman's famous ‘Song of Myself’. It would have just about as much delicacy and deftness and discrimination.” Cather, who shared a home with her partner Edith Lewis for nearly forty years, may also have felt a connection to Whitman for the queer sensibility of his poetry.