
Walt Whitman's Letter for a Dying Soldier to His Wife Discovered - samclemens
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/12/470214579/walt-whitmans-letter-for-a-dying-soldier-to-his-wife-discovered
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justifier
whitman, i think, is the greatest writer

rather than this being because of his work directly, it's more because he
understood and lived the idea that change is inevitable and necessary

he only wrote one book his entire life

publishing edits through the years

it is amazing to see how the poems both change and remain the same over time

when i read a whitman piece i always read it as i know he himself would have:

    
    
         how can i make this more beautiful and inclusive?
    

[http://whitmanarchive.org/](http://whitmanarchive.org/)

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eitally
Thanks for calling out the Whitman Archive! I worked to digitize the
manuscript & early first editions of Leaves of Grass while an undergraduate at
UVA, and both had a great time and learned a ton about Whitman and old books.

To make a modern comparison, scholars believe Whitman authored Leaves of Grass
in a very similar way to how Kanye West is treating The Life of Pablo. He
released a rough draft to a limited audience over a short period of time, but
continued editing, revising and adding to it for years afterward, as his
perspective and understanding of the world around him evolved.

Whitman was an amazing writer. I wouldn't hesitate to call him America's
Joyce.

Editorial on The Life of Pablo: [http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/could-
kanye-s-tlop-update...](http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/could-kanye-s-tlop-
updates-change-the-way-we-see-albums)

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andrelaszlo
I was confused by the + signs, I read them like "plus" (is this a common use
of this sign?) until I read the scanned letter, which was surprisingly easy to
read. The signs looked much more like & ("and") than + to me.

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evincarofautumn
Yes, “+” is often used in handwriting (typically with a loop) to mean “and”.
In casual speech or when teaching mathematics to young students, “+” can be
pronounced “and”, as in “one and one make two”.

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AI_Overlord
For some reason it causes me a bit of difficulty to understand the headline on
first pass. Something seems to be off with the gramar. Why not just say "Walt
Whitman's letter to wife of dying soldier" Easier to understand in my opinion.

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Polyphonie
Re-read the headline:

> Walt Whitman's Letter For A Dying Soldier To His Wife Discovered

Just make sure you separate the middle part- Letter For A Dying Soldier To His
Wife- from the rest.

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gpvos
That is actually the part with the problem. One problem for me is that when
initially scanning the sentence, "for" implies that the letter is intended to
be sent _to_ the soldier; "on behalf of" would be clearer. Another minor
unclarity is that "his" can refer to either the soldier or Walt Whitman.

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frozenport
This is misdirected, we should take on the struggle against _capitalism_ ,
rather than _capitalization_.

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dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11302538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11302538)
and marked it off-topic.

