“O Captain! My Captain” as a poet laureate task?

Hardly.

Whitman wrote poems based on Lincoln’s assassination, the first immediately afterward. He was passionate about abolition, he served in the Civil War as a volunteer nurse, he was devastated by Lincoln’s death and those experiences helped shape his poetry.

This and another major Whitman poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, expressed the national grief and his personal loss of Lincoln.

“O Captain!” was not at all a poetic exercise to mark an occasion. It was real stuff and we can hear the echoes still.

Lugubrious? I’d say electrifying.

I remember a hot summer night in my cheap New Orleans studio, listening in the dark to Orson Welles intone “Song of Myself” in his magnificent rolling voice. It was a transformative experience. It was like God speaking to me.

I didn’t know poetry could do that. I didn’t know an American could do that. Like it or not, and most academics don’t, Whitman became our first world poet and I would say he remains so. His influence was global. For instance, without Whitman we would have no Neruda as we know him.

Whitman is called the father of free verse and he broke American poetry open in a way that succeeding poets built upon. He is indispensable.

“Citizen Kane” is an outstanding example. What made it stand out rapidly became industry standard, so someone growing up seeing movies since “Citizen Kane” doesn’t see why it’s so special.

It’s hard to read old classics, whether poetry or prose, without running into the same thing.

Is the Whitman poem schmaltzy because of the wording and event it is describing so indirectly, or due to the repeated exposures to its reading or publication? Some may be affected no matter how often they read it, but for others it would lose its impact after 5 or 10 viewings.

— R2L

I don’t find it ‘schmaltzy’ at all. For one thing, even though it is in one sense about Lincoln, in another sense, like most great poetry, it has general applicability. We all know that life is like that sometimes, the person who makes a good thing possible doesn’t live to see it, for whatever reason. From Moses to Lincoln to whoever you choose, it happens that way sometimes.

On another level, by the time I was in school poetry was not much in evidence in our elementary or high school studies. I got a little exposure to it. I discovered that I like Frost in high school because of assigned readings, for ex. But not very much.

Which might be why I encounter the old poems now with pleasure, precisely because they are relatively fresh and new to me.

I love Emily Dickenson’s The Name of it is Autumn:

The name – of it –is “Autumn” (656)
by Emily Dickinson

The name – of it – is “Autumn”–
The hue – of it – is Blood –
An Artery – upon the Hill –
A Vein – along the Road –

Great Globules–in the Alleys–
And Oh, the Shower of Stain–
When Winds – upset the Basin –
And spill the Scarlet Rain –

It sprinkles Bonnets – far below –
It gathers ruddy Pools –
Then – eddies like a Rose – away –
Upon Vermilion Wheels –

— Emily Dickenson

I never even knew that poem existed until well into adulthood.

Even with this poem – the ultimate, lugubrious “official poet laureate” task – he manages to remain vigorous and break/bend the meter for dramatic effect.

During this 250th year’s celebrations I expect we will see many discussions of the DOI and the Gettysburg Address, which have and can probably justify and successfully withstand many different analyses. Other patriotic or historical documents may also be given useful attention, but probably would not bear too many analysts before boredom set in.

Recent events have led me to study the US Civil War. i ran across “Madness Rules the Hour: Charleston, 1860 and the Mania for War” which seems to describe the same sort of hysteria that has become common among the TDS afflicted.

I just started reading “Abundance or Collapse: The Fork in the Road for AI, Robotics, and Civilization” which describes the upeaval soon to occur as AI and robotics bring about rapid change. The author is a former Musk engineer. It is an excellent read so far.

Agreed.

I wrote two posts on the subject. They’re from the early days of the blog, so I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen them: this and this.

The plan was to kill Lincoln, Seward, and VP Johnson, and it was a conspiracy. This is known, and not speculation. Seward was wounded, but Johnson wasn’t. Booth had heard Grant was going to be at the theater with the Lincolns, but the Grants didn’t go. As far as I know, there’s no dispute about these things.