Walt Whitman For Today

 I do not read much poetry - which probably shows in my prose - but I did read Whitman. If you are an American, you must read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

If you have not read Whitman, take a look at E. Thomas Finan's An Essential Human Respect: Reading Walt Whitman During Troubled Times.

In this moment, Whitman’s verse presents a scene of recognition of an essential humanity across radical differences: that enemy is “a man divine as myself.”  Whatever the differences of cause between these two men — and these differences may yawn chasm-wide — they have a common human fellowship.

Rather than succumbing to self-righteous demonization, Whitman illustrated the power of a human empathy that transcends ideological bellicosity.  This empathy does not ultimately nullify ideological difference — Drum-Taps does not call for the defeat of the Union in order to end the war — but empathy does situate this difference in a more complicated context.

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