A concise and well-considered summary of the forces-biographical,
social, cultural-that combined in fashioning our most original and
democratic poetic voice. Reynolds (English and American
Studies/CUNY) is eminently equipped for the task of reducing to a
sonnet the epic of Whitman's life. A Bancroft winner for Walt
Whitman's America (1995), Reynolds knows the historical period (and
the details of Whitman's life) so thoroughly that he can find the
essence-the quintessence, really-of a vast complexity. After an
opening chapter sketching the peripatetic poet's life (1819-92),
the author examines clusters of influences that made Whitman
Whitman. Among these are the Temperance Movement (Whitman published
a novel on the subject, Franklin Evans, in 1842), the swirl and
chaos and cacophony of urban life, the popular arts (especially the
theater, oratory, painting, and photography), science and its next
of kin (phrenology and mesmerism), philosophy (he read Swedenborg),
religion, sex, war, and Lincoln. Whitman loved to hear the
preaching of Henry Ward Beecher (who didn't?) but wouldn't permit
any particular creed to circumscribe him. Reynolds properly credits
the poet for his innovations in style and technique (poetry after
Whitman no longer looked or sounded the same) and for his
ambitious, surely quixotic, desire to encompass all experience in a
word, a phrase, a poem. But Reynolds is no mere press agent for
Whitman. He recognizes the ambiguities in the man, quoting, for
example, a nasty social-Darwinist passage about race (from later in
his life) that flatly contradicts the poet's earlier egalitarian
views. And there are other troubling contradictions. Whitman
believed, on balance, that the Civil War was a good thing (it
cleared the air!) but did see, in grim and red detail (as a
volunteer nurse), the horrors of this air-clearing. (Another Dec.
2004 volume from Oxford, Memoranda During the War, a selection from
Whitman's journals during the war, edited by Peter Coviello, shows
the range and capacity of the poet's sensibility.) Precise and
provocative, learned and lucid. (12 b&w illustrations) (Kirkus
Reviews)
From the great events of the day to the patient workings of a
spider, few poets responded to the life around them as powerfully
as Walt Whitman. Now, in this brief but bountiful volume, David S.
Reynolds offers a wealth of insight into the life and work of
Whitman, examining the author through the lens of
nineteenth-century America.
Reynolds shows how Whitman responded to contemporary theater,
music, painting, photography, science, religion, and sex. But
perhaps nothing influenced Whitman more than the political events
of his lifetime, as the struggle over slavery threatened to rip
apart the national fabric. America, he believed, desperately needed
a poet to hold together a society that was on the verge of
unraveling. He created his powerful, all-absorbing poetic "I" to
heal a fragmented nation that, he hoped, would find in his poetry
new possibilities for inspiration and togetherness. Reynolds also
examines the influence of theater, describing how Whitman's
favorite actor, the tragedian Junius Brutus Booth--"one of the
grandest revelations of my life"--developed a powerfully emotive
stage style that influenced Leaves of Grass, which took passionate
poetic expression to new heights. Readers will also discover how
from the new medium of photography Whitman learned democratic
realism and offered in his poetry "photographs" of common people
engaged in everyday activities. Reynolds concludes with an
appraisal of Whitman's impact on American letters, an influence
that remains strong today.
Solidly grounded in historical and biographical facts, and
exceptionally wide-ranging in the themes it treats, Walt Whitman
packs a dazzling amount of insight into a compact volume.
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