Walt Whitman worked as a nurse in an army hospital during the Civil War and publ
ished "Drum-Taps," his war poems, as the war was coming to an end. Later, the bo
ok came out in an expanded form, including When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloo
m'd, Whitman's passionate elegy for Lincoln. The most moving and enduring poetry
to emerge from America s most tragic conflict, "Drum-Taps" also helped to creat
e a new, modern poetry of war, a poetry not just of patriotic exhortation but of
somber witness. "Drum-Taps" is thus a central work not only of the Civil War bu
t of our war-torn times.
But "Drum-Taps" as readers know it from "Leaves of Gr
ass" is different from the work of 1865. Whitman cut and reorganized the book, r
educing its breadth of feeling and raw immediacy. This edition, the first to pre
sent the book in its original form since its initial publication 150 years ago,
is a revelation, allowing one of Whitman s greatest achievements to appear again
in all its troubling glory."
