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Das Goldene Zeitalter, Lucas Cranach the Elder Whitman is the American poet of Utopia, of the impossible longing for the unattainable, perfect state of democratic comradeship. Whitman’s verse celebrates the self—the uniquely particular—as well as people en masse—the all-encompassing universal. This tension seems almost insurmountable. His vision of and for America as both fully democratic […]

So far the most interesting persona of Walt Whitman that I have encountered is the advocate, man of the people. I love how connected he is to people of all ages, races,  and times in history. I am also fascinated by the way he has been adopted as the voice for individuals or groups of […]

“It avails not, time nor place — distance avails not” Walt Whitman, a self-proclaimed poet of the body and the soul, wrote in a vein of transcendentalist beliefs, nurturing a concept of spiritual and physical connectivity and adhesiveness among all people. Whitman writes on the continuity of the human experience and how that continuity unites […]

The Whitman identity that has most impressed and influenced me during our readings this semester is the Whitman of non-binary soul and body. Whitman has expressed in numerous different ways the relationship between the body and the soul; though they are represented as two separate entities, their relationship interacts as though they are one. Feed […]

Throughout his work and especially in “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman presents a unity or fellowship between all things. However, even in “Song of Myself,” Whitman often times will allude to those he will not include – “others” in this world of inclusion. These outsiders, unworthy of Whitman’s love, can be deduced in the opposites. […]

In class, we have read many texts which directly and intentionally respond to Whitman, but we seldom explored the Whitman energies that went into hiding before making a subliminal resurgence in the late 20th century. One genre that embodies these energies in multitudes is hip-hop, a relatively new art form that projects various dimensions of […]

For the Final Project I will be researching Walt Whitman’s presence in social media, specifically looking at Twitter. One of the major aspects Whitman is known for is being a poet who tried to encompass and connect with his poetry and consequently his readers. Whitman is often referred to as being a universal poet, or […]

I’m really interested in the Walt Whitman who nursed the wounded and played a role in the Civil War. “Wound-Dresser” Whitman is particularly interesting for multiple reasons. The dynamism of gentleness that is a part of his poetry and prose about the Civil War is extremely intriguing. In excerpts of “Specimen Days” Whitman delivers ice […]

In section ten of Whitman’s most celebrated poem “Song of Myself,” he describes giving aid to a runaway slave: “ANd brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet, And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes.” Originally published in 1855, Whitman […]

Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s magnum opus, went through a number of significant changes over his lifetime. Adding to and revising the original 1855 edition until his death in 1892 when the “Deathbed Edition” was published, Whitman created a work of art that was (and is still) defined by its fundamentally kinetic, dialogic, and collectively engaging […]