From Specimen Days
This entry is so visceral, so gritty, and yet so matter of fact in its writing style. Perhaps the contrast between the content and the writing style makes it that much more disturbing-- that "a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart" could be so commonplace that its description contains no drama... or so horrific that no description would attempt to capture it. Maybe both.
In any case, I found it fascinating to see Whitman in action here. Mostly I imagine him lying on the ground outside or sitting on someone's porch listening to music or wandering the earth, scribbling in his notebook... but here he is engaging with America in the most real of ways, sitting beside dying soldiers and prisoners of war, wandering amongst the dead. It gives his writing a new kind of weight to envision him here. He wasn't just blowing smoke about America... he was there, he was engaged, he was impacted and grappling with the changing culture.
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