Walt Whitman's Civil War

by Walter Lowenfels, Walter Lowenfels (Editor), Winslow Homer (Illustrator)

In 1863 Walt Whitman first proposed to the publisher John Redpath a book about his Civil War experiences. It was never published. But in a draft prospectus Whitman described ”a new book . . . with its framework jotted down on the battlefield, in the shelter tent, by the wayside amid the rubble of passing artillery trains or the moving cavalry in the streets of Washington . . . a book full of the blood and vitality of the American people.” Walter Lowenfels has edited the book Whitman could only envision. From a mosaic of materials—newspaper dispatches, letters, notebooks, published and unpublished works—as well as thirty-six of Whitman’s great war poems, Lowenfels has created a thrilling and unique document. Sixteen pages of drawings by Winslow Homer, another distinguished eyewitness, are reproduced here from the artist’s field sketches. The result is a book that produces in the reader exactly what Whitman had hoped, one that captures ”part of the actual distraction, heat, smoke, and excitement of those times.”

Genres: Poetry, History, Civil War, War, American History, Nonfiction, Classics

368 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 1989

Reviews

[Eva]

It's like feeling the pulse of the US during the Civil War. A mixture of sadness and resolution over the war mixed in with the descriptions of an emerging industrial US and big, open, spaces.

[teannah]

o captain my captain 🩷🩷

[Jason]

Staggeringly beautiful. His personal accounts from the hospitals are breathtaking, his remembrance of Lincoln's death unrivaled and the final chapters analyzing the vast weight of the War of Attempted Secession on our nations future and present unparalleled. Remarkable.

[Chris Long]

I knew of Walt Whitman and the American Civil War but knew little of either. I really enjoyed discovering both, being able to read Whitman poems with a lot of context around them.
I loved seeing the was and the horrors of it through a compassionate and generous lens, from Lincoln to Iowa farm boys in hospital he focussed beautifully on people caught up in the horror.
Sadly it appears we haven’t learnt an awful lot.

[Abbey]

Read Harder 2024: Read an indie published collection of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author.

POPSUGAR 2024: A collection of at least 24 poems

[Carlos Cobertizo]

"...Con la sed del lobo y la del león que lame la sangre aún caliente de sus víctimas, con la saña y el deseo explosivo de querer vengar a toda costa camaradas asesinados y hermanos, alumbradlo con las lúgubres llamaradas de los caseríos incendiados, montones de ceniza ennegrecida todavía humeante, imaginaros unas cenizas aún más negras y siniestras en los corazones humanos y tal vez sólo entonces podréis tener una idea muy vaga de la horrenda realidad de esta guerra"

[Jenni]

Classic.

[Jean]

Especially liked Whitman's account of the chaos surrounding President Lincoln's assassination in the Theater. And the last chapter about how the war came about--not just the South's fault.