"Silently Watch(ing) the Dead": The Modern Disillusioned War Poet and the Crisis of Representation in Whitman's Drum-Taps

"Strange fascination": Walt Whitman, Imperialism, and the South

“…the apostrophe in "Vigil" also belies the soldier's death in that it keeps him alive, at least in the space of the poem, as a recipient of the speaker's communicated love. 15 in addition, the comrade now lives though his absorption into the narrator's memories and the feelings; the look the comrade gives him before death, "i shall never forget." according to the speaker, that love, and therefore the comrade, will continue after death.…”

Liminal Spaces: Literal and Conceptual Borderlines in Whitman's Civil War Poems

“…But in calculating the "loss of transcendent meaning precipitated by the corpse" in the war poems, Sychterz fails to account for Whitman's ability to see the transcendent power of death as the ultimate liminal transition. 14 Still, a dynamic comprised of mediating poet and mute corpses underscores the irony of what hutchinson sees as Whitman's desire for "communion between the definite and determinate identities" in turner's version of communitas. hutchinson's triadic structure between the poet, the audience, and the spiritual world does allow the poet to hold "the key position in this triad, mediating between the other two referents of the performance, attending to their diverse demands,"-even if this structure lies outside of full communitas (hutchinson, xx).…”