EBOOK Walt Whitman

From the great events of the day to the patient workings of a spider, few poets        responded to the life around them as powerfully as Walt Whitman. Now, in this brief        but bountiful volume, David S. Reynolds offers a wealth of insight into the life and        work of Whitman, examining the author through the lens of nineteenth-century        America.Reynolds shows how Whitman responded to contemporary theater, music,        painting, photography, science, religion, and sex. But perhaps nothing influenced        Whitman more than the political events of his lifetime, as the struggle over slavery        threatened to rip apart the national fabric. America, he believed, desperately        needed a poet to hold together a society that was on the verge of unraveling. He        created his powerful, all-absorbing poetic "e;I"e; to heal a fragmented nation that, he        hoped, would find in his poetry new possibilities for inspiration and togetherness.          Reynolds also examines the influence of theater, describing how Whitman's favorite        actor, the tragedian Junius Brutus Booth--"e;one of the grandest revelations of my        life"e;--developed a powerfully emotive stage style that influenced Leaves of Grass,        which took passionate poetic expression to new heights. Readers will also discover        how from the new medium of photography Whitman learned democratic realism and        offered in his poetry "e;photographs"e; of common people engaged in everyday activities.          Reynolds concludes with an appraisal of Whitman's impact on American letters, an        influence that remains strong today.Solidly grounded in historical and biographical        facts, and exceptionally wide-ranging in the themes it treats, Walt Whitman packs a        dazzling amount of insight into a compact volume.