Will &+Nona

Walter "Walt" Whitman = By: Nona and Will C. =

= **Biography** =

Walt Whitman is a man who is a great poet. On May 31, 1819, he was born in West Hills, town of Huntington, Long Island. He died on March 26, 1892, at the age of 72. At the age of 12 he was an apprentice newspaperman selling papers around town. By the age of 17 he had 5 years experience as a journeyman printer in New York. When he was about 9 years old he was pulled out of school to help take care of his family. He also taught litirature to kids. He learned how to read at a very early age. When he got a little older, when he could start to date, he was in relationships with men and women. Some people either say he was a homosexual or a bisexual. People knew he was definatly gay because people wrote books about his relationships with other men. He also had pictures with men looking at each other (below). Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, one of the men he LOVED !!!!! == An Army Corps on the March == With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,  With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an  irregular volley,  The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,  Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun—the dust-cover'd men,  In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,  With artillery interspers'd—the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,  As the army corps advances.

== Eighteen Sixty-One == Arm'd year—year of the struggle,  No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,  Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano,  But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,  carrying rifle on your shoulder, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> the belt at your side, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> continent, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> dwellers in Manhattan, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> the Ohio river, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Chattanooga on the mountain top, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> weapons, robust year, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon, <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.4em;"> I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

= Walt Whitman’s influence = Walt Whitman was the most influential poet of the late 19th century. His flowing free verse style and hidden meanings make his poems rich and enjoyable. His style is comparable to the style of Shakespeare. He became a poet after a long time of editing a newspaper called the Long Island Star. After bouncing around for a few years, Walt decided to stop competing for the “usual rewards” and become a poet. The theme of Walt’s poems varies, but usually connected to his current environment. For example, when working as a volunteer nurse for the Union army in the civil war he wrote a poem called, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” Walt Whitman is famous for modernizing poetry and in praised by Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau, other well known authors

= **To War March the Soldiers** =

To war march the soldiers, to one fixed rhythm, one beat In step, together, yet apart Fighting for themselves and their country proudly

But fear eats away at them like a lie untold Why they fight they do not know Or where they are going

If they will come home to spring; hope and happiness blooming like the flower Or to winter where all is dead and there is no hope left

Or if they will come home at all

= **Connection** =

This poem is like Walt Whitman's poems because he wrote in free verse and he wrote a lot about war. They are alike in style because of the format, long, flowing sentences filled with figurative language, and a free verse style that creates an opportunity to say exactly what you want to say without having to limit to yourself to the usual rhyming standard. However, they are also alike in tone. Walt's poetry usually has a seemingly happy tone, but then he will throw in a stanza or two that confuse and really make the reader think. Often, one of the most powerful lines in Walt's poems are the last ones, and in this poem the most powerful line is the last one too. = **Bibliography** = Walt Whitman, Library of Congress Database Poets.org Reynolds, 314 Callow, 283
 * The Walt Whitman Archive**- its bibliography is below

<span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Allen, Gay Wilson. The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman. 1955. Rev. ed. 1967. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Foner, Eric. Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Klammer, Martin. Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of "Leaves of Grass." University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1995. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Rubin, Joseph Jay. The Historic Whitman. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1973. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Thomas, M. Wynn. The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1987. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">. "Walt Whitman and the Dreams of Labor." Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays. Ed. Ed Folsom. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1994. 133-152. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America, 1982. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">. The Early Poems and the Fiction. Ed. Thomas L. Brasher. New York: New York UP, 1963. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">. The Gathering of the Forces. Ed. Cleveland Rodgers and John Black. 2 vols. New York: Putnam's, 1920. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">. I Sit and Look Out: Editorials from the Brooklyn Daily Times. Ed. Emory Holloway and Vernolian Schwarz. New York: Columbia UP, 1932. <span style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 15px; text-indent: 0em;">. Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts. Ed. Edward F. Grier. 6 vols. New York: New York UP, 1984.