In “Year that Trembled Beneath Me,” Whitman asks, as the war begins to scar both the land and Whitman’s own psyche: “Must I change my triumphant songs? / Must I indeed learn to change the cold dirges of the baffled? / And sullen hymns of defeat”?
The poems we read from Drum-Taps offer a range of possible responses to this question: some of his so-called “recruitment” such as “Beat! Beat! Drums” seem to take some an eerie and at times unhinged pleasure in the coming disruptive violence; others, such as “The Wound-Dresser” with its odd frame narrative seem to cast the violence of the current war in a strange sort of retrospect; still others such as “The Artilleryman’s Vision” capture experiences of war that seem disarmingly modern; and still others seem such as “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice” recede into an untroubled, prophetic voice.
Choose one poem from Drum-Taps and discuss what makes the poem unique to you–what makes it most interesting, most difficult, or most relevant, for better or worse.
The poem that I found to be the most unique was “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice”. What I love about this poem is that Whitman, rather than fall into depression over the ills of War, decides to flip this sullen situation and praise Liberty and Equality and rise above the horrors of the situation. While reading this poem, it felt like he was giving a speech and the first thing that came to my mind studying this work was Charlie Chaplin’s speech from “The Great Dictator”. There are so many lines to choose from, but the one that stands out to me the most is when Chaplin says, “The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.” The power behind Chaplin’s speech, with the film being released in 1940, has similar themes to Whitman’s poem. When Whitman writes, “The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, // The continuance of Equality shall be comrades,” I feel as if Whitman is raising a similar sentiment as Chaplin (449). Both artists are preaching for unity and comradery in the face of evil and only through this bond of Peace and Liberty, can this tyranny be extinguished.
It is so interesting that he returns to his core Calamus theme related to adhesiveness–the bond between men. His statement that “affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet” is both utterly lovely and remarkably abstract. How, at war’s end, can Whitman immediately transcend such carnage, uniting north and south? The perfumes in this poems are fascinating as well as they seem to infiltrate and overcome the scent and stench of death that threatens the poem here as Whitman seeks to rise above and above and above. Such lovely sentiments, but so difficult to pull off!
The poem that caught my attention out of this bunching was “The Year that Trembled and reel’d Beneath Me.” As is structured in the above question, the poem is short bet seems all incapsulating of the turmoil that Whitman is experiencing on behalf of the country divided. It asks the questions of if Whitman must reimagine his thoughts on America, and acknowledge the problems of the place he previously idealized and glorified. What puzzled me about the poem was its very placement in the middle of the Drum-Taps cluster. It sees like the perfect poem to either start or to end the cluster with. A perfect introduction or bookend, given it’s concise length and questioning structure. In the poem it is explicit the contradictions that Whitman sets up to convey his confusion and realigning of his view of America. Whitman raved about the glory of the country as he was a product of its creation and deeply connected to the nationalistic ideas it was founded on. The Civil War interrupted this, cracking Whitmans previously established views wide open. This is possibly the reason for its placement in the middle of the Drum-Taps cluster. There is no preface for the disturbance in his thinking that the war brought along. Just like “The Year that Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me” these questions were existing amidst all the chaos happening in the US at the time.
Interesting reflection on the placement of this poem within the Drum-Taps cluster. As the prose readings on the Civil War noted, Whitman–and everyone else–thought the war would be over quickly. That’s partly why the brash and triumphal war songs early in Drum-Taps can seem almost blood-thirsty given the subsequent carnage. Here, Whitman seems to face that reality as he becomes once again more pensive and reflective as we saw him at times in the “By the Roadside” cluster. This is, as you note, a poem unfolding quietly amid the burgeoning and shocking chaos of war.
In Whitman’s “Drum-Taps” the collection of poems seems to be a very long way of giving a call to action. Although, his voice changes between poems, the overall message is clear to any reader: there is a problem within America and a civil war is imminent. For me, the strongest and most powerful voice used by Whitman in this section comes from “The Centenarian’s Story.” The opening lines of the poem are “Give me your hand old Revolutionary,/ The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps (make room gentlemen,)…” Essentially, what Whitman is doing is alluding to the Revolutionary War that happened in America relatively close to his time, to the point where it would be on the minds of Americans. Moreover, Whitman points out that the “hill-top is nigh,” saying that it is only a few steps to revolution. Whitman is not directly telling people to be violent and overthrow the government, but moreso saying that one should not be afraid to stand up for what they believe in.
This is such a strange poem, as Whitman shifts from a military training exercise to the Centenarian’s story of a bloody Revolutionary War battle that was lost. The landscape is layered with the echoes of this bloodshed and loss, which seems a foreboding. Yet strangely, the poem seems almost to accept this sense of loss, this capitulation. What does this poem, then, say about war in general, or the lessons of war, or the cyclical nature of war?
The poem that I found the most interesting to read was “Beat! Beat! Drums!”. With this poem, Whitman shows the effects of wartime on the homefront in a unique way through the use of repetition and imagery of everyday people and their professions to drive home the point of how war negatively affects the home. He repeats the line, “Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow!” at the beginning of each stanza to push this idea of the sounds of war drowning out everyday activity in America. With the opening lines, “Beat! beat! — blow! bugles! blow! / Through the windows — through the doors — burst like a / ruthless force” (419). By opening the poem in this way, Whitman suggests the sheer and powerful force that war (and the sounds associated with war) has on homefront. It has the power to burst through objects that are meant to shelter people from the outside world and disrupt the peace and tranquility of people’s everyday lives. To Whitman, war has the power to disrupt the peace of a congregation, a scholar, a groom on his wedding day, and many more people. With this poem, Whitman demonstrates a high level of thought and craftsmanship that left me astounded, unlike most of his other poems.
I agree with your sense of this poems power and careful crafting. For a so-called “recruitment” poem it is utterly terrifying–the language is so shrill and percussive as the drums sound the terror of war disrupting every aspect of society: life and death, family and home, economy religion. Just remarkable!
In Whitman’s “Over the Carnage rose a prophetic voice,” I had another moment where I felt like Walt was speaking directly to me, and people like me. In the middle of the poem, Whitman writes, “One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade; From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be friends triune, More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.” These lines struck me because I am from New England, but have traveled to ‘hot Carolina.’ Even in two completely different generations and cultural contexts, people from different parts of the world still have trouble identifying with each other, and see themselves as ideologically separated. For example, I do not enjoy watching football while many folks in the Southern states have grown up with college and professional football in their living rooms every single sunday of the season. This past weekend, someone said to me, “Ivy, you’re in the South, you have to learn to love football.” While I disagree, I believe Whitman’s advice in this poem is relevant to this conversation. Although we all may come from different backgrounds, geographical locations, cultures and religions, I believe in Whitman’s words, “the love of lovers tie you.” We all have something in common, and that is our capability to love our fellow humans, despite our differences.
I was a little surprised at “Beat! Beat! Drums!” for how different, in theme and tone specifically, it is to the poems in nearly every other section we’ve read. Through the poems in Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass, and Sea Drift, I’d come to associate Whitman with cerebral, celebratory, inquisitive, and somatic poetry. But “Beat!…” is firmly tied to the Civil War and the profound effect it had on Whitman. There is no real “deeper dive” — it essentially functions as propaganda against the war. Noah has already pointed out that the repetition of “Beat! beat! drums!–blow! bugles! blow!” creates a steady rhythm within the poem itself, and the phrase semantically recalls musical instruments, so that the overall effect is quite overwhelming. This effect aligns with the theme of the poem, which suggests that the war has become so “loud” and overpowering that it cannot be ignored even in day-to-day life, where the sound interrupts “the peaceful farmer…ploughing his field,” among others (419). The poem is effective in that manner, but it doesn’t feel like a creative triumph, like a many of the poems we have read so far have felt. It feels more like a convincing, if a little soulless, piece against the war.
It’s fascinating that his poem, which is often called a “recruitment” poem–and was read as such–can seem like an anti-war poem now. The tone almost has that unhinged quality we saw in his “Poem of the Proposition of Nakedness.” It’s one of those moments where Whitman seems most true in writing through or against himself. As the Whitman Scholar Ed Folsom has noted about this poem: “Whitman took a draft of the poem with him to Pfaff’s beer cellar in Manhattan, where he used to hang out with his Bohemian friends, and read it aloud. One Southern friend took exception, and began a physical fight with the poet until other friends broke up the scuffle. Tempers were running high after the Union humiliation at the first battle of Bull Run, and Whitman was determined to stoke up support for the Union cause.”