A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim and Beat! Beat! Drums! In these poems, Walt Whitman addresses concerns of war. The speaker in “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim” describes three dead soldiers in the Civil War. In “Beat! Beat! Drums!” the speaker tells of the power of war to overwhelm all other elements of society. Write a free verse poem in response to the messages of these poems. The speaker of your poem should be addressing Whitman himself, so that your poem is a conversational reply to the messages Whitman puts forth in his poems. Use elements of free verse style and structure in your poem. You may also want to quote lines or phrases from the two Whitman poems to help establish a conversational effect. |