“O Captain! My Captain!” is probably Walt Whitman’s most famous poem, which is kind of ironic because it barely sounds like him. If you know Whitman from Leaves of Grass, you’re used to sprawling free verse and these massive catalogs of images. This poem? It’s tight, structured, and actually rhymes. He wrote it in 1865 … Read more
“On the Beach at Night Alone” showed up in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, and it’s one of Whitman’s quieter poems. Not quiet as in boring, but quiet as in contemplative, almost meditative. The setup is straightforward enough: Whitman’s standing alone on a beach at night, listening to the waves, looking at the … Read more
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is Whitman’s long elegy for Abraham Lincoln, though he never actually says Lincoln’s name. Written in 1865 right after the assassination, this poem processes grief through images from nature: spring lilacs, a falling star, the song of a thrush. Instead of writing a traditional eulogy full of praise … Read more