"What is the grass?": The Roots of Walt Whitman\u27s Cemetery Meditation

Examines the significance of the cemetery for Whitman, seeking to "locate the roots of Whitman\u27s idyllic poetic space in the real space of the rural cemetery" by examining nineteenth-century "cemetery literature" and by analyzing how rural cemeteries--particularly Brooklyn\u27s Mount Auburn and Green-wood cemeteries--were covered in periodicals of the era, including in Whitman\u27s own journalism; argues that Whitman made "innovative use of the rural cemetery" in his poetry