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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Whispers of Heavenly Death” by Walt Whitman (1868)
Written hard on the heels of Whitman’s own ghastly experiences as a nurse in Washington during the Civil War, this cycle of poems first featured “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” The poems detail Whitman’s grand vision of how death cannot be the terror small minds allow it to be. He gently coaxes his reader to follow him into a radical new interpretation of death as a transcription into a soothing spiritual reality beyond the confirmation of the senses.
“Resignation” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1850)
The heartbreaking contemplation of a father struggling to understand the implications of the death of his child, Longfellow’s poem can be contrasted with Whitman’s thumping affirmation of a transcendent cosmos that renders such individual deaths irrelevant and a distraction from the business of engaging the now. This message—valorizing humility, patience, and suffering—is exactly what Whitman rejects. Longfellow convinces himself death is a transition and that he must be patient for the reunion promised by Christianity in the glory of heaven.
“Footnote to Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (1956)
Ginsberg, one of Whitman’s most ardent admirers, drew much of his Beat gospel of dazzling and uncompromising optimism in every element of the physical universe from Whitman.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman