"The Million Dead, Too, Summ'd Up": Walt Whitman's Civil War Writings

Walt Whitman

Mar 2021 · University of Iowa Press

About this ebook

This book is the first to offer a comprehensive selection of Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry and prose with a full commentary on each work. Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill carry on a dialogue with Whitman (and with each other) as they invite readers to trace how Whitman’s writing about the Civil War develops, shifts, and manifests itself in different genres throughout the years of the war. The book offers forty selections of Whitman’s war writings, including not only the well-known war poems but also his prose and personal letters. Each are followed by Folsom’s critical examination and then by Merrill’s afterword, suggesting broader contexts for thinking about the selection.

The real democratic reader, Whitman said, “must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work,” because what is needed for democracy to flourish is “a nation of supple and athletic minds.” Folsom and Merrill model this kind of active reading and encourage both seasoned and new readers of Whitman’s war writings to enter into the challenging and exhilarating mode of talking back to Whitman, arguing with him, and learning from him.

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About the author

Ed Folsom is Roy J. Carver professor of English at the University of Iowa, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, codirector of the online Whitman Archive, and editor of the Iowa Whitman Series at the University of Iowa Press. He is author or editor of numerous books and essays on Whitman and other American writers. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Christopher Merrill is director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He has published six collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, many edited volumes and books of translations, and six works of nonfiction, among them Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.