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 […]
Tag: Walt Whitman
‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’: A Poem by Walt Whitman
One of several poems Walt Whitman wrote about Abraham Lincoln, and probably the best, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ was written in the summer of 1865, in the aftermath of the assassination of Lincoln in April of that year. An example of the pastoral elegy, ‘When Lilacs Last […]
‘O Captain! My Captain!’: A Poem by Walt Whitman
Even those who aren’t familiar with Walt Whitman’s poems may recognise ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, thanks to its use in the 1989 Robin Williams film Dead Poets Society. Like another of Whitman’s poems, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ was written in the wake of […]