‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ is one of the most famous poems by the American poet, Walt Whitman (1819-92). Across 206 lines of innovative free verse, Whitman offers an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated shortly before Whitman wrote the poem. You can read ‘When Lilacs […]
‘Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand’ is a Walt Whitman poem addressed to his reader, and might be viewed as a disclaimer for all of Whitman’s poetry – much as another of his famous poems, ‘Song of Myself’, can be read as his declaration or credo. ‘Whoever You […]
One of the shortest of Walt Whitman’s great poems, ‘O Me! O Life!’ was featured in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society: Robin Williams’s character recites it to his class. ‘O Me! O Life!’ contains many of the features of Walt Whitman’s greatest poetry: the free verse rhythm, the alternation […]