Death in American Literature (Vol. 89) - Lance Dean (essay date 1993)

Lance Dean (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: “‘O so loth to depart!’: Whitman's Reluctance to Conclude,” ATQ, Vol. 7, No. 1, March, 1993, pp. 77-90.

[Below, Dean explores Whitman's difficulty in coming to a conclusion and facing temporality as evidenced in his poetry, noting that he does finally succeed in accepting endings in his First Annex: Sands at Seventy.]

Like most of us, Walt Whitman found taking leave difficult. Though justly famous for his settings out, he faced the challenge of concluding his engagement with his themes, his readers, his poem, and his life. “After the Supper and Talk,” from which I’ve taken my title, expresses Whitman's keen awareness of his reluctance to conclude, “his final withdrawal prolonging.” Written in 1887 and situated as the concluding poem in First Annex: Sands at Seventy, this poem clearly concerns the “final withdrawal” from writing and from life. Not surprisingly, as Whitman...

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