An Army Corps on the March

An Army Corps on the March is a poem by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman was a poet during the civil war era who greatly changed the way poetry was viewed, used, and even thought about. Whitman was a revolutionary idealist who covered a broad range of topics from war to God to even his own homosexuality. The section in his book Leaves of Grass called Drum-Taps can mean a lot of things but for the most part the section and the poems inside of it focus on war and Lincoln, a man whom Whitman revered greatly. In the Drum-Taps section the poem I chose to analyze is An Army Corps on The Move. Just from the title, which is also the first line we already know that on the surface this poem is about an Army moving, presumably on the warpath. Knowing Whitman was in the Civil War and on the Union side we can assume that the army is a Union army and is going to fight a confederate army. The second line "With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley," (Whitman.) This line brings to mind the long lines of men firing in to another long line of men, the most common civil war tactic. The part that says "With now the sound of a single shot snapping" (Whitman). Is meant to bring to mind the idea of a single man firing the first shot in a battle. Then " and now an irregular volley" (Whitman). This part is to represent how everyone starts to fire at each other after the first shot. On the surface this poem represents a war and a battle more specifically but in my opinion it represents the world as a whole too. The first line really represents like the idea of a trend. if on person does something then everyone does that too. Like clothes or an accessory ideas like that will sweep the globe as fast as people may start shooting at each other in a battle. The criticism I read was pretty stupid and did not really talk about a meaning and just sort of said "Yeah it is about soldiers and how they are getting shot at" so I can not really make any comparisons or contrasts from my views and the criticisms views since it did not have any. I thought this poem was pretty cool and I liked the meaning behind it. I thought Whitman did a really good job of giving the poem a double meaning, with it signifying not only soldiers in battle but also each and every on of the people that might read his poem as well.


Oliver, Charles M. "'An Army Corps on the March'." Critical Companion to Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCWW023&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 10, 2011).

Whitman, Walt. "AN ARMY CORPS ON TWaltHE MARCH. (Leaves of Grass [1891-1892])." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. .