Reading One Of Walt Whitman's Civil War-Era Poems On His 200th Birthday

The great American poet Walt Whitman was born 200 years ago today. His monumental work was “Leaves Of Grass” first published in 1855. But Whitman was also a poet of the Civil War. He lived and worked in Washington, D.C., where he often visited wounded soldiers, turning those experiences into the book “Drum Taps.” We hear a reading of Whitman’s poem “1861,” about the year the war started.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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