Hey Hey Hey Whitman

Walt Whitman is one of my favorites. I love poetry, and free verse is my favorite. I completely disagree with Robert Frost, as I believe that one can express more in free verse and create a more meaningful poem. When we talked about “The Wound-Dresser” in class, I looked towards Megan in a fit of glee. It was amazing that I restrained myself to only a few comments on the poem, because I probably could have talked the entire time. I mean, look at the amazing imagery that this man creates. He writes of how the soldiers’ “priceless blood reddens the grass the ground” (ln. 28) and the “refuge pail,/ Soon fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled again.” (ln. 32-33). I can almost visualize what he saw while he volunteered in the hospital. I, like many other people, have never been in or seen the devastations of war first hand, but back then people were surrounded by it. This poem paints a picture of the horrors of war, in that it is not just a representation of glory and honor, but of the injured and dying as well.
One of the most disturbing images that I found in the poem was in the third section when he was writing about the different operations that had to be done to each soldier. When he talks about how he had to “cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,” (ln.54), I was kind of grossed out. I do love the use of the word offensive here, though, because it can be applied in several different ways. The first, of course, is that the wound itself is offensive in smell. One could also take it to mean that the wound isn’t just offending the sensory organs, but the fact that is offensive that this person should have to suffer so much. If I think about it a lot, it makes me a little sick to my stomach, so off to the next section!
Ah, death. How bad of a situation does it have to be for some one to wish “come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!/ In mercy come quickly.” (ln. 44-45). I don’t think that death is beautiful, but I’ve also never been in the types of situations that these soldiers were in. They must have been suffering an awful lot to wish for death, but this is something that I feel people have to experience in some form to understand, although I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
Speaking of death, I love how the last image that Whitman leaves the reader with is that of a “soldier’s dying kiss resting on these bearded lips.” (ln. 65). What an awesome way to end a poem. It is almost like the story of the soldier is passed onto Whitman to tell through the kiss. It shows the suffering of the soldier and the duty of Whitman to explain the sorrow of the soldier to those not familiar with the atrocities of warfare.