Whitman the Political Poet

Whitman the Political Poet PDF Author: Betsy Erkkila
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195113802
Category : History and criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Erkkila's aim is to repair the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political and the poet and the history that has governed the analysis and evaluation of Whitman and his work in the past.

Whitman the Political Poet

Whitman the Political Poet PDF Author: Betsy Erkkila
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195113802
Category : History and criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Erkkila's aim is to repair the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political and the poet and the history that has governed the analysis and evaluation of Whitman and his work in the past.

Whitman the Political Poet

Whitman the Political Poet PDF Author: Betsy Erkkila
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780197726815
Category : Political poetry, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Erkkila's aim is to repair the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political and the poet and the history that has governed the analysis and evaluation of Whitman and his work in the past.

Whitman the Political Poet

Whitman the Political Poet PDF Author: Betsy Erkkila
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poets, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Whitman's Poetry of the Body

Whitman's Poetry of the Body PDF Author: M. Jimmie Killingsworth
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807843147
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book combines literary and historical analysis in a study of sexuality in Walt Whitman's work. Informed by his "new historicist" understanding of the construction of literary texts, Jimmie Killingsworth examines the progression of Whitman's poetry an

The Whitman Revolution

The Whitman Revolution PDF Author: Betsy Erkkila
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609387236
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Whitman Revolution brings together a rich collection of Betsy Erkkila’s phenomenally influential essays that have been published over the years, along with two powerful new essays. Erkkila offers a moving account of the inseparable mix of the spiritual-sexual-political in Whitman and the absolute centrality of male-male connection to his work and thinking. Her work has been at the forefront of scholarship positing that Whitman’s songs are songs not only of workers and occupations but of sex and the body, homoeroticism, and liberation. What is more, Erkkila’s writing demonstrates that this sexuality and communal impulse is central to Whitman’s revolutionary poetry and his conception of democracy itself—an insight that was all but suppressed during the mid-twentieth century emergence of American literature as a field of study. Highlights of this collection include Erkkila’s essays on pairings such as Marx and Whitman, Dickinson and Whitman, and Melville and Whitman. Across the volume, she demonstrates an international vision that highlights the place of Leaves of Grass within a global struggle for democracy. The Whitman Revolution is evidence of Erkkila’s remarkable ability to lead critical discussions, and marks an exciting event in Whitman studies.

In Walt We Trust

In Walt We Trust PDF Author: John Marsh
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583674756
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Life in the United States today is shot through with uncertainty: about our jobs, our mortgaged houses, our retirement accounts, our health, our marriages, and the future that awaits our children. For many, our lives, public and private, have come to feel like the discomfort and unease you experience the day or two before you get really sick. Our life is a scratchy throat. John Marsh offers an unlikely remedy for this widespread malaise: the poetry of Walt Whitman. Mired in personal and political depression, Marsh turned to Whitman--and it saved his life. In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save what he believed by showing how they emerged from Whitman's life and times, and by recreating the places and incidents (crossing Brooklyn ferry, visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals) that inspired Whitman to write the poems. Whitman, Marsh argues, can show us how to die, how to accept and even celebrate our (relatively speaking) imminent death. Just as important, though, he can show us how to live: how to have better sex, what to do about money, and, best of all, how to survive our fetid democracy without coming away stinking ourselves. The result is a mix of biography, literary criticism, manifesto, and a kind of self-help you're unlikely to encounter anywhere else"--

On Whitman

On Whitman PDF Author: C. K. Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176108
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet C. K. Williams's personal reflection on the art of Walt Whitman In this book, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet C. K. Williams sets aside the mass of biography and literary criticism that has accumulated around Walt Whitman and attempts to go back to Leaves of Grass as he first encountered it—to explore why Whitman's epic "continues to inspire and sometimes daunt" him. The result is a personal reassessment and appreciation of one master poet by another, as well as an unconventional and brilliant introduction to Whitman. Beautifully written and rich with insight, this is a book that refreshes our ability to see Whitman in all his power.

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass PDF Author: Walt Whitman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Get Book Here

Book Description


Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle

Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle PDF Author: Andrew Lawson
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587296705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
By reconsidering Whitman not as the proletarian voice of American diversity but as a historically specific poet with roots in the antebellum lower middle class, Andrew Lawson in Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle defines the tensions and ambiguities about culture, class, and politics that underlie his poetry.Drawing on a wealth of primary sources from across the range of antebellum print culture, Lawson uses close readings of Leaves of Grass to reveal Whitman as an artisan and an autodidact ambivalently balanced between his sense of the injustice of class privilege and his desire for distinction. Consciously drawing upon the languages of both the elite culture above him and the vernacular culture below him, Whitman constructed a kind of middle linguistic register that attempted to filter these conflicting strata and defuse their tensions: “You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.” By exploring Whitman's internal struggle with the contradictions and tensions of his class identity, Lawson locates the source of his poetic innovation. By revealing a class-conscious and conflicted Whitman, he realigns our understanding of the poet's political identity and distinctive use of language and thus valuably alters our perspective on his poetry.

Song of Ourselves

Song of Ourselves PDF Author: Mark Edmundson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674237161
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the midst of a crisis of democracy, we have much to learn from Walt Whitman’s journey toward egalitarian selfhood. Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself. Esteemed cultural and literary thinker Mark Edmundson offers a bold reading of the 1855 poem, included here in its entirety. He finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday. Song of Myself does this, setting the terms for democratic identity and culture in America. The work captures the drama of becoming an egalitarian individual, as the poet ascends to knowledge and happiness by confronting and overcoming the major obstacles to democratic selfhood. In the course of his journey, the poet addresses God and Jesus, body and soul, the love of kings, the fear of the poor, and the fear of death. The poet’s consciousness enlarges; he can see more, comprehend more, and he has more to teach. In Edmundson’s account, Whitman’s great poem does not end with its last line. Seven years after the poem was published, Whitman went to work in hospitals, where he attended to the Civil War’s wounded, sick, and dying. He thus became in life the democratic individual he had prophesied in art. Even now, that prophecy gives us words, thoughts, and feelings to feed the democratic spirit of self and nation.