“Specimen Days” is Whitman’s own compilation of prose fragments written across two decades of Walt Whitman’s life: his hospital visits during the Civil War, his recovery from a paralyzing stroke, his jaunts through the broad western states of America, his delight at trees and moths and glowworms, his disappointment at the posturing of prairie women. In his own words, it’s a “mélange of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting, traveling—a little thinking thrown in for salt, but very little— … wild and free and somewhat acrid—indeed more like cedar-plums than you might guess at first glance.”