3.2 Reading: Walt Whitman on Democracy: The People, the Poem Incarnate

Walt Whitman on Democracy: The People, the Poem Incarnate

By: Chris Highland, B.A. in Religion and Philosophy from Seattle Pacific University and an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary

Walt Whitman was much more than a great American poet (see Leaves of Grass). He was a Civil War “chaplain” (see Specimen Days), and a very perceptive social critic and political philosopher (see Democratic Vistas). In his virtual worship of the Idea of America, he brought his poetic sentiments as well as his workingman’s sensibilities into focus. [Continued…]