When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

Today we took a field trip to a local cemetery to reread a portion of Walt’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d”. For me, it brought the literature to life. Since the poem was based around the death of Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War, It brought the text to life. I feel like Walt could have written the poem in a cemetery, because of the vivid imagery used to describe his feelings. O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? “And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?” It brought a new dimension to the text, because I don’t have to imagine what this would look like, because I am standing in the middle of it. Not the exact one, but all cemeteries are very similar. As we were leaving, I wondered if anyone buried here had a poem written about them.

Reading out loud made me realize how unique Walt Whitman’s writing is, because he strings together words that I am not used to. I found myself stumbling on some of the phrases, and having to read and reread stanzas to try and just say the words in the correct order. “And the streets, how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo! then and there,” Walt is a fantastic writer, it’s just difficult to understand his verbiage sometimes. Similar to The Traveling Onion, I understood the message and context more the second time I read it, then more so when I asked questions, and read it aloud.

But overall, I think the trip helped me understand the context of the poem better. "I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes." However, I didn’t have a camera, so I took a picture with my phone, so hopefully I can send it to my e-mail somehow.