So long! : Walt Whitman's poetry of death
"Until now no one has studied as systematically the degree to which mortality informs Whitman's entire enterprise as a poet. So Long! devotes particular attention to Whitman's language and rich artistry in the context of the poet's social and intellectual milieus. We see Whitman (and his many personae) as a folk prophet announcing a gospel of democracy and immortality; pondering death in alternating moods of acceptance and terror; fantasizing his own dying and his postmortem selfhood; yearning for mates and lovers while conscious of fallible flesh; agonizing over the omnipresence of death in wartime; patiently awaiting death; and launching imaginary journeys toward immortality and godhood." "By exploring Whitman's faith in death as a meaningful experience, we may understand better how the poet - whether personified as representative man, victim, hero, lover, or visionary - lived so completely on the edge of life."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2004
University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, ©2004
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 294 pages ; 24 cm
9780817313777, 9780817352783, 081731377X, 0817352783
52216144
"Triumphal drums for the dead": "song of myself," 1855
"Great is death": leaves of grass poems, 1855
"The progress of souls": leaves of grass, 1856
"So long!": leaves of grass, 1860
"Come sweet death!": the drum-taps poems, 1865-1866
"Sweet, peaceful, welcome death": leaves of grass, 1867-1892