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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“The Waste Land“ by T.S. Eliot (1922)
In one of his best-known and most influential works, Eliot begins with lilacs in April in Part I, introduces the song of the hermit thrush in Part V, bookending the poem with the images of death and artistic translation from Whitman’s poem. Part V of “The Waste Land” also echoes “Lilacs” when asking “who is the third who walks always beside you,” calling up Canto 14: “Then with the knowledge of death as walking on one side of me […]” (Canto 14, Lines 13-14).
“Kaddish“ by Allen Ginsberg (1957)
Allen Ginsberg’s extended poem of mourning demonstrates Whitman’s influence in its extended descriptions of place, its long, expansive lines, and its chant-like anaphora. Ginsberg acknowledges Whitman’s influence on his poetry and even made Whitman a character in his poem “A Supermarket in California.”
“Lincoln is Dead“ by George Moses Horton (1865)
George Moses Horton, the first American to publish a book while enslaved, wrote several poems on Lincoln’s assassination. In this poem, contemporary to Whitman’s tribute, Horton compares Lincoln to another celestial body in the west—the setting sun. Horton left North Carolina with Union troops in 1865, liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman