Comments on: Sam P. for Oct. 27 http://swords.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/10/25/sam-p-for-oct-27/ Finer than prayer!(?) Sun, 21 Dec 2014 09:21:57 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.30 By: mscanlon http://swords.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/10/25/sam-p-for-oct-27/comment-page-1/#comment-94 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:43:50 +0000 http://swords.lookingforwhitman.org/?p=64#comment-94 Nicely done, Sam. I was very struck by Whitman’s long italicized address to death, which he calls “Dark Mother”– why the maternal when the rebirth is not apparent in this section? I’ve been mulling over Wallace Stevens: “Death is the mother of beauty.” Is Lincoln beautiful in part because he dies, because his loss makes us love what he was all the more? Surely that’s true about Kennedy, for instance. It might be true in the Lincoln lecture. But not much about Lincoln, the corpse, is itself beautiful in this poem.

Sorry, that’s a mess of thoughts…

]]>