Something we touched on in class, that I would love to dive deeper into here on the blog is some of the changes in form we see here in Drum Taps from Whitman. In class we discussed how the entirety of “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night” is one sentence, with only one period at the end. This is something, that looking back, Whitman does a lot in Drum-Taps. Is it intention and impact in other poems the same as it is in “Vigil?” To stick with this idea of form-what did you make of the shifting speakers in “Song of the Banner at Daybreak?” What effect does it have and why does Whitman do this? We haven’t read a poem yet in which Whitman clearly states a change in speaker as he does here—to me it felt almost more script like, like a conversation. But do each of the speakers play the same role? Are they talking to each other?

If we want to look more closely at the content, one phrase from the Murray piece we read I think perfectly encapsulates Whitman’s role in the civil war, that he was a “sustainer of spirit and body in some degree, in time of need.” In what ways do you see this role played out in Drum-Taps? How does he do this “sustaining?”

Maggie’s CS for February 25
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