Walt Whitman

1. Walt Whitman Dylan Childers

2. Bio • Poet and journalist Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York. • Considered one of America's most influential poet Whitman aimed to transcend traditional epics, and reflect the nature of the American experience and its democracy. • In 1855 he self-published the collection Leaves of Grass, now a landmark in American literature.

3. Critic Reviews • "Erkkila presents an extraordinary account of how Whitman's political purposes informed the most fundamental choices of his life and career, and in so doing she has written what is surely one of the two or three most valuable one-volume studies of Whitman ever produced."--South Atlantic Review • “Walt Whitman left two especially complicated and subtle areas for scholars and readers to contemplate: the sexual and the textual.”

4. A poem: Reconciliation Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

5. Reconciliation Breakdown • Free verse poem • Natural imagery- beautiful as the sky • Oxymoron- beautiful that war • At first, he seems to be talking about natural forces - death, nighttime • These natural elements seem to “negate” man's unnatural acts ("war," "deeds of carnage"). • In the last three lines, he redefines "reconciliation" in personal, human terms. Whitman locates the poem in a specific funeral. He identifies the speaker as perhaps a soldier, perhaps the dead man's killer - and not the narrator he seemed to be in the first lines. • So the reconciliation is the coming together of enemies more than likely.

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