{"id":7053345,"date":"2026-09-01T02:48:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-january-20-2026-occasional-poems-whitman-on-lincoln\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T02:48:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:48:42","slug":"americanstudies-january-20-2026-occasional-poems-whitman-on-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7053345","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: January 20, 2026: Occasional Poems: Whitman on Lincoln"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[65 years
\nago Wednesday<\/a>, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated
\nas President<\/a>. One of the most famous parts of that January 1961 event was Robert
\nFrost\u2019s powerful poem<\/a>, so this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that text
\nand other occasional poetry from American history. Leading up to a first for
\nthis blog, a piece of my own creative writing!]<\/p>\n

On takeaways from the three poems Walt Whitman wrote on the
\noccasion of Lincoln\u2019s assassination.<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span>Hush\u2019d Be
\nthe Camps To-Day (May 4, 1865<\/span><\/a>)\u201d: Whitman\u2019s <\/span>book of
\nCivil War poetry<\/span><\/a> Drum-Taps<\/i> (1865) was already in the
\nprinting process when Lincoln was assassinated, but the poet managed to get one
\nmore poem added to the book in order to reflect that tragic postscript to the
\nwar. Supposedly <\/span>Whitman
\nwasn\u2019t too happy<\/span><\/a> with \u201cHush\u2019d,\u201d which stands to reason if he
\ncompleted it more quickly than normal to get it into the book (its first
\nmanuscript is in fact dated the day after the assassination). But I think his
\nchoice of speaker and perspective is quite brilliant\u2014he writes in the
\ncollective voice of Union soldiers, which allows Whitman both to express the
\ncommunal loss of Lincoln and (in a classic Walt move) make his writing of the
\npoem a response to the soldiers\u2019 request that he \u201cSing poet in our name\/Sing of
\nthe love we bore him\u2014because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span>O Captain!
\nMy Captain!<\/span><\/a>\u201d: Written roughly six months after the assassination and included
\nin his book Sequel
\nto Drum-Taps<\/a><\/i> (1865), \u201cO Captain!\u2019 is definitely Whitman\u2019s most famous
\nresponse to Lincoln\u2019s death, and perhaps (thanks to a certain fictional English
\nteacher<\/a> and then a certain climatic tribute
\nto same<\/a>) his most famous poem period. That\u2019s ironic, as it\u2019s a lot more
\nstraightforward and as a result a bit less interesting than most of Whitman\u2019s
\npoems, which is perhaps why he later
\nexclaimed<\/a>, \u201cDamn My Captain\u2026I\u2019m almost sorry I ever wrote the poem.\u201d But he
\ndid add that it \u201chad certain emotional immediate reasons for being,\u201d and I
\nbelieve that it\u2019s in its two-part stanza structure that the poem fully and
\nimpressively embodies those reasons\u2014moving from victory to loss, from wartime triumph
\nto postwar despair, and doing so not just through the two four-line sections in
\neach stanza but also through the page layout of those respective sections. <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span>When
\nLilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom\u2019d<\/span><\/a>\u201d: Also included in Sequel to Drum-Taps<\/i>,
\nand indeed giving the book its subtitle, was this much longer and more epic
\npoem inspired by Lincoln\u2019s assassination. And, I would argue, a far more
\nWhitmanesque poem than these other two, in two particular ways that I want to
\nhighlight here. First, and more overt, is the poem\u2019s use of pastoral metaphors
\n(including the titular lilacs but also a star and a thrush), rather than direct
\nreferences to Lincoln and the war and so on, to achieve its powerful emotional
\nresonances. But even more interesting to me is its balance of two very
\ndifferent styles, both of which are at the heart of another epic Whitman poem, \u201cSong
\nof Myself<\/a>,\u201d as well: first-person romantic elegies; and his famous \u201ccatalogs,\u201d
\nlists of people and places and social realities. This is Whitman\u2019s truest occasional
\npoem for Lincoln\u2019s death, and it\u2019s a beautiful one. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next occasional poem tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What do you think? Occasional poetry you\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[65 years ago Wednesday, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President. One of the most famous parts of that January 1961 event was Robert Frost\u2019s powerful poem, so this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that text and other occasional poetry from American history. Leading up to a first for this blog, a piece of my own creative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,3805,14394,33579,4307,215677],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7053345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-january","tag-lincoln","tag-occasional","tag-poems","tag-whitman"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: January 20, 2026: Occasional Poems: Whitman on Lincoln - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7053345\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: January 20, 2026: Occasional Poems: Whitman on Lincoln - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[65 years ago Wednesday, John F. 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