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GARRETT PECK, Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America's Great Poet. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2015. 192 pp.
Walt Whitman in Washington, D. C. will appeal to readers curious to see Whitman's life overlaid with the evolving urban history of the capital. The book straddles the genres of biography and literary travel guide. Garrett Peck offers a narrative-driven portrait of Whitman seen through the overlapping frames of nineteenth- and twenty-first century D.C. The author of Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C.; Prohibition in Washington D.C.: How Dry We Weren't; and The Potomac River: A History and Guide, Peck is first and foremost a writer concerned with the history of Washington. Peck's background as a tour guide with the Smithsonian Associates permeates his prose. This is much more an exploration of a city than of a poet.
Attuned to general readers not already intimate with Whitman's life and work, this book focuses on the decade that Whitman lived in Washington (1863-1873). Peck seeks to elevate the poet's place within the contemporary cityscape, and to illuminate the impact that the capital had on the trajectory of Whitman's life during and following the Civil War. He begins with the premise that Whitman is most often associated with New York City, or, in his twilight years, with Camden, New Jersey. Aside from the Civil War, Peck argues, Whitman's Washington has not entered the cultural zeitgeist:
When people asked why I was writing this book, I explained that Whitman lived in Washington, D. C. for ten years. "He did?!" was the near universal response. They knew he served as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War, but not that he remained in Washington and took a job as a federal clerk or that he wrote his Civil War poetry book Drum-Taps as a Washington resident (14).
While there is no other book devoted solely to Whitman's residency in the capital, this period has been extensively covered in the major biographies by Gay Wilson...