{"product_id":"9780817381639","title":"So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death","description":"Explores Whitman’s intimate and lifelong concern with mortality and his troubled speculations about the afterlife.\u003cbr\u003eWalt Whitman is unquestionably a great poet of the joys of living. But, as Harold Aspiz demonstrates in this study, concerns with death and dying define Whitman’s career as thinker, poet, and person. Through a close reading of \u003ci\u003eLeaves of Grass\u003c\/i\u003e, its constituent poems, particularly “Song of Myself,” and Whitman’s prose and letters, Aspiz charts how the poet’s exuberant celebration of life--the cascade of sounds, sights, and smells that erupt in his verse--is a consequence of his central concern: the ever-presence of death and the prospect of an afterlife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSo Long!\u003c\/i\u003e devotes particular attention to Whitman’s language and rich artistry in the context of the poet’s social and intellectual milieus. We see Whitman (and his many personae) as a folk prophet announcing a gospel of democracy and immortality; pondering death in alternating moods of acceptance and terror; fantasizing his own dying and his postmortem selfhood; yearning for mates and lovers while conscious of mordant flesh; agonizing over the omnipresence of death in wartime; patiently awaiting death; and launching imaginary journeys toward immortality and godhood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy exploring Whitman’s faith in death as a meaningful experience, we may understand better how the poet--whether personified as representative man, victim, hero, lover, or visionary--lived so completely on the edge of life. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cb\u003eHarold Aspiz\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor of English Emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, and author of \u003ci\u003eWalt Whitman and the Body Beautiful.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47110571491568,"sku":"9780817381639","price":34.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780817381639_p0.jpg?v=1763747216","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780817381639","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}