So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death

(Elle) #1
67.LGVar, 452.


  1. See Kuebrich, Minor Prophecy. 21.

  2. Rajahsekhariah, 418; Roots of Whitman’s Grass, quoting from James C. Thom-
    son’s translation of the Bhagavadgita, a copy of which was presented to Whit-
    man (70).

  3. Hick, Death and Eternal Life, 361. Hick is following Buddhist scripture, and
    de¤nes the term “rebecoming” as “unprocreated.” Hick also cites Saint Augustine’s
    observation (251) that “the inherent gravitation of our being” is toward God.


Chapter 5


  1. Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman, the Man (New York, 1896), 205–206. On
    Whitman’s hospital service, see WWBB, 77–105; Robert Leigh Davis, Whitman and
    the Romance of Medicine (Berkeley: U California P, 1997); Loving, Walt Whitman, 1–25,
    251–295.

  2. Charles I. Glicksberg, ed., Walt Whitman and the Civil War: A Collection
    of Original Articles and Manuscripts (1933; reprint, New York: A. S. Barnes, 1963),
    121–126.
    3.Memoranda During the War [and] Death of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler
    (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1962), 3–5; on the relation between the notebooks and the
    Memoranda, see introduction, 23 (separately paginated). Whitman was not unique in
    keeping informal pocket notebooks of his hospital experiences—the famed nurse
    Clara Barton kept similar ones; see Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American
    Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1996), 131.

  3. F. DeWolfe Miller, ed., Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-
    Taps (1865–6) (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1959), xxvi; on
    Whitman’s attempts to get his book published, see xxvi–xxxi.
    5.Sequel to Drum-Taps also contained two poems re®ecting a spirit of personal
    despair, possibly left over or reworked from the 1850s—“O Me, O Life” and “Ah
    Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats”—each concluding on a note of half-hope.
    “Ah Poverties” is a compact masterpiece possibly related to “As I Ebb’d with the
    Ocean of Life.”

  4. See Julianne Ramsey, “A British View to the American War: Walt Whitman’s
    ‘Drum-Taps’ Cluster and the Editorial In®uence of William Michael Rossetti,”
    WWQR 14 (1997), 166–175.
    7.LGVar, 456n.; LG, 501. Originally included in “Shut Not Your Doors to Me
    Proud Libraries.”

  5. Miller, Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps, xxvii–
    xxix.

  6. An interesting discussion on this point is Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites:
    Origins and History of the Passions of War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 162.

  7. Manuscript fragment, quoted in Glicksberg, Walt Whitman and the Civil War,

  8. Apparently parts of the original were missing or undecipherable.

  9. Glicksberg, Walt Whitman and the Civil War, 29, 82–83; on the genesis of a
    couple of Drum-Taps poems, see 121–126.

  10. Loving, Walt Whitman, 9. The rousing “recruitment” poem appeared in Har-


Notes to Pages 160–165 / 263
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