Dave Smith’s “With Walt Whitman at Fredericksburg” offers a rather melancholy account of the current America the poet observes. Smith’s places himself alongside Whitman, in observation of he and Simpson as he outlines the shortcomings of the progress Whitman had in mind as America’s key to a better future. The images outlined are highly specific and relate directly to Whitman’s surroundings, or how Smith imagines his surroundings to have been. The tone is that of disheartening surrender on behalf of the speaker who notes “how progress has not changed us much” (Smith 188). The blending of these extravagant images of failure of American society with more personal depictions of the speaker’s sunny porch increase the level of personal sorrow the speaker feels as he imagines what Whitman might have made of the world he hoped would materialize and the world as it actually is. There is an emphasis in the closing stanza on industry interrupting natural landscapes, revealing a downfall the speaker sees as crucial to 0ver all disillusionment he is filled with based on his surroundings. There is also a trope wondering what noble causes there are left amongst Americans that seems to filter into most stanzas. The speaker begs the question of who and what “progressive” and “hopeful” are Americans fighting for, seemingly skeptical of whether or not anyone truly knows their intentions and motivations any longer.
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