Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography

Allott, Daniel. Built Free Verse and Freedom into His Poetry. Investor's Business Daily (March 21, 2016). [Offers general overview of Whitman's career.]Bellis, Peter J. Reconciliation as Sequel and Supplement: Drum-Taps and Battle-Pieces. Mickle Street Review no. 21 (Spring 2016), micklestreet.rutgers. edu. [Begins with question, Why does Drum-Taps require sequel, and Battle-Pieces supplement?, and goes on note how and Herman Melville could simply have ended their books with close of Civil hostilities, but both felt something was needed to give war shape and meaning: an additional movement toward reunification and though both supplements brought formal disruption as is deferred or displaced into separate section of text and marked by an all too visible scar or seam; goes on demonstrate how the break in Whitman's text marks point between wartime conflict and postwar reconciliation, necessary pivot in what he comes see as single temporal and psychological process, while for Melville, is blocked by politicized struggle of Reconstruction, discursive shift that leaves volume not so much temporally incomplete as structurally flawed (Whitman sees reconciliation as task that poetry can still accomplish, given time; Melville fears that it may lie beyond reach of discourse altogether); concludes by observing that, nearly 150 years later, it is all too clear that Melville, not Whitman, was more prescient, for tasks of reconciliation and reunification still remain.]Bennett, Joe. Finding Walt's Wisdom amid Jakes. Dominion Post [Wellington, New Zealand] (February 10, 2016). [Recounts experience of reading Whitman's poetry while on toilet, finding an insect crawling on page, quelling instinct kill it, and realizing that letting creature be was consistent with Whitman's message.]Black, Christopher Allan. Revolutionary Rhetoric in Doris Kearns Team of Rivals and Historiographic Elegies of Walt Whitman. Philological Review 39 (2013), 53-83. [Examines how Doris Kearns Team of Rivals and Whitman's Memories of President both paint heroic picture of sixteenth president as political savior of antebellum American society, analyze Lincoln's rise power in antebellum era and his ability maintain integrity of union, view as martyr who was sacrificed heal wounds of divided country, and portray Lincoln as possessing an almost mystical command of rhetoric that caused individuals of different political backgrounds reconcile their differences; concludes that, unlike historian, Whitman's role as national elegist was reflect sentiment of American public towards President during his time, while Goodwin's narrative deconstructs accepted image of by offering public picture of as principled moral leader deeply conflicted over pressing political issues of his day.]Boorse, Michael J., ed. Conversations (Winter 2015-16). [Newsletter of Walt Association, Camden, NJ, with news of association events, timeline of Whitman at War (this issue's timeline goes from December 5, 1864, December 6, 1865), and one article, listed separately in this bibliography.]Bradford, Adam C. Embodying Book: Mourning for Masses in Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps. Mickle Street Review no. 21 (Spring 2016), micklestreet. rutgers.edu. [Examines Civil era mourning practices and notes how many family members of dead soldiers were never able retrieve body of their loved one, thus robbing them of opportunity go through traditional mourning rituals; proposes that Drum-Taps is Whitman's attempt mediate grief and foster successful mourning through book that . . . not only represented deceased, but allowed readers imagine themselves reconnected them through its pages, process made possible by Whitman's curious lack of detail, and augmented by material construction in which binding, typography, and visual ornamentation were crafted represent any and every lost soldier of Civil War, thus facilitating a collaborative process of mourning which would create what was, in essence, community of 'readerly' mourners united in spite of geographical, political, or ideological distances, as these readers invested Whitman's anonymous soldier images . …