So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death
of death is borne out by an intriguing notebook entry: “A Cluster of Po- ems, Sonnets expressing the thoughts, pictures, aspirat ...
my hand has completely satis¤ed me.” This quasi-sexual clasp of hands seems to trigger a mystical moment that “satis¤es” the per ...
women, suddenly springs from the pages of the book to embrace the reader. Savoring the encounter as though it were occurring at ...
pages of Leaves of Grass to embrace a living man or woman in an encoun- ter of mutual ecstasy. The poet, who longed to make univ ...
like some of his utopian contemporaries—projected the resolution of his troubles and the problems facing civil society into an i ...
Stephen J. Tapscott explains that Whitman’s imagery of “spiritual and vegetable generation” is particularly effective because “t ...
“real” world as well as the conventional religious idea that the known world is a staging area that is anterior to the “real” wo ...
poem’s title suggests a tone of democratic familiarity, the poem belongs to the venerable tradition of the poet’s farewell to hi ...
Satis¤ed that he has completed his mortal obligations, the persona pre- pares to exit from the mortal scene. Now acting as his o ...
our soul the way a cocoon encloses the future butter®y, and when the time is ripe we can let go of it. Then we will be free of p ...
may be overcome in several ways. We are, after all, in the realm of intertwining fantasy and “reality.” Even if one submits to d ...
I advance personally.” Mystically integrated into his ever-living volume of poems, and seemingly aroused by the contact of his e ...
That the above passage represents both a physical and a spiritual union with his reader/lover is con¤rmed by the persona’s stran ...
to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.”^63 And we might com- pare Whitman’s bold imagery, for example, to this venera ...
the eternal realms where it may (or may not) be merged into the godhead. One suspects that he would prefer to have it both ways— ...
1 There was indeed a long foreground to Whitman’s sympathetic service in Washington’s military hospitals. The prose sketches he ...
they requested, writing letters for them, sometimes nursing them, and even intervening on their behalf with the medical staff. O ...
ington only a few months—by July 5, 1863—he could declare, “I intend to move heaven & earth to publish my ‘Drum-Taps’ as soo ...
directly stating it), the pending action of this Time and Land we swim in, with all their large con®icting ®uctuations of despai ...
focus on the visage of a single dying soldier in several of the Drum-Taps poems, he remarked that “the pale faces, the look of d ...
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