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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/O Captain! My Captain!/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ealdgyth via FACBot (talk) 1 January 2021 [1].

O Captain! My Captain!

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Nominator(s): Eddie891 Talk Work 01:34, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arguably Whitman's most famous poem, considered by many critics these days among his worst. I personally am a fan. I've reworked the article through a a GA review (thanks Hog Farm) and a peer review (thanks, Gog the Mild, SandyGeorgia, and Wehwalt. I think it's now well on its way to FA quality and ready for an FAC. Thanks for any and all comments you may have -- Eddie891 Talk Work 01:34, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Image review—pass

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Source review

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Spotchecks not done

  • "the most famous during his lifetime". Body text supports most popular, but that's a slightly different thing - source for "most famous"?
Changed to most popular though most famous could be sourced, I think popular fits better
  • Lead says first published in The Saturday Press, infobox says Sequel to Drum-Taps - which is correct?
Saturday Press
  • "stylistically uncharacteristic of Whitman's poetry because of its... narrator other than Whitman" - source?
cut, though implied in several sources I didn't find it explicitly stated
  • Direct quotes should be cited in the lead even if cited later
Added, and picked a quote that uses "trite" instead of "triteness"
Done
You've now got "Manuscript Division" twice. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Cut and otherwise filled out
  • FN6: page? Ditto FN13, check for others
Removed 6, added page to 13
  • FN17: section title is not part of work title
added
  • Use a consistent date format
Ran date formatting script
  • Some citations have doubled quotation marks
Think I got them all
  • Be consistent in how you present citations to works hosted at the Walt Whitman Archive
filled out, standardized
  • FN40 is incomplete. Ditto FN75, check for others
fixed, I think that's it unless you think I should add ISSN's to all of the sources
No, but you should be consistent about when you include them. 75 (now 74) still has an incomplete title. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed title, added ISSN's to all news orgs
  • FN41: date is overprecise
Fixed
  • Be consistent in whether you include publisher and/or location for periodicals
Ping. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Think I cut them all now
Still present for Literary Digest. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:22, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • FN55: author is backwards
fixed
  • FN78: title shouldn't include publication date
cut
  • Check alphabetization of General sources
Reorganized
  • Be consistent in whether you include location for books, and if so how these are formatted
Think they all have consistent locations now, cities like Chicago and New York City I left off states, more obscure ones I added them
  • Csicsila: location is incorrect
It's given as Tuscaloosa, which is what I have?
Arizona? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
D'oh! Fixed Eddie891 Talk Work 16:59, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
cut them except for journal/chapter/encyclopedia page ranges

Support from Gog the Mild

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Recusal coordinator duties to review this. I looked it over at PR, but it seems to have changed a bit since then.

  • "and was greatly moved upon Lincoln's assassination" Suggest "upon" → 'by'.
  • Done
  • Why is the text in note e not in the main article?
  • put in the article
  • "In the 1997 book A Reader's Guide to Walt Whitman, scholar Gary WIlson Allen concluded that "The symbolism is trite, the iambic-anapestic movement artificial, and the rhymes erratic". [Paragraph break] The poem's critical reception in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been far more negative." Possibly you could do with moving some sentences around.
Cut that sentence-- it doesn't really add anything
  • "The 2004 Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature entry on Whitman argues that the poem has been "unfairly criticized for its conventional rhythm and rhyme" " Should this not be in the last paragraph of "Reception"?
  • sure
  • " "deliberately [made] a salve for his ailing country" by writing the poem in a style they" Either "they" → 'it', or recast this part of the sentence.
  • it works for me
  • "In the second and third stanzas, Whitman invokes religious imagery, making Lincoln a "messianic figure", according to Schöberlein. Schöberlein compares ..." "Schöberlein. Schöberlein". Maybe 'In the second and third stanzas, according to Schöberlein, Whitman invokes religious imagery, making Lincoln a "messianic figure". Schöberlein compares ...'?
  • done

A fine and well prepared article. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild, thanks for the comments. Replied above. Cheers, Eddie891 Talk Work 00:01, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator comment

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Approaching four weeks in and only one support. Eddie891, you need to call in some favours or otherwise generate some interest if this is not to be archived. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:49, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild Uh oh! You are pretty much the only person that I have on speed-dial to call in! I'll ask around, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Cheers, Eddie891 Talk Work 15:19, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, Hog Farm, fancy something a little different? SusunW, might this be up your street? Feel free to ignore if not. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I shall give it a look over when I finish Loker this morning. SusunW (talk) 16:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm traveling so I won't be able to review for several days yet. Hog Farm Bacon 16:25, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support from SusunW

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A most enjoyable read Eddie891. Most of my comments are trivial in nature and concern establishing the authority of various persons mentioned in the article. A one-word title/profession would probably be sufficient in most cases.

  • He volunteered in the army hospitals as a hospital missionary It is redundant to use hospital twice and medical missionaries tend to be nurses, physicians, and surgeons. Did he have medical training?
Fixed redundancy
  • Who is Helen Vendler and why is her opinion definitive?
Literary critic-- as addressed later, she's written one of the few works that focuses on this poem. I established who she was.
  • Who is Horace Traubel and what does the phrase presented Whitman with a newspaper mean? Did Traubel write the article or was it someone else? Why would Traubel give Whitman someone else's critique?
Traubel was one of Whitman's closest friends who published transcriptions of their dates. I've tried to clarify-- does that help at all?
  • Ditto with William Dean Howells, who is he? I can assume he is a critic, because he is "reviewing" but what authority does he have to critique?
He was an author, actually very famous, known as the "The Dean of American Letters" and a prominent editor of The Atlantic Monthly
  • Who is George Rice Carpenter? Why should his opinion carry any weight?
Scholar and biographer of Whitman. He was pretty well known in his day
  • Why is Henry B. Rankin's opinion worth noting? Who is he?
Noted biographer of Lincoln, NYTimes gave him a brief obit
  • Same for James O'Donnell Bennett.
author. His opinions in that book are still cited in well known and prominent publications, [2], [3]
  • Can you link "threnody"?
Certainly
  • Who is William E. Barton?
Not the person linked, as it turns out-- but the book itself is notable, reviews: [4] and in the Saturday Review of Literature, Booklist, and several newspapers, cited in relevant works like: [5]
  • Gary WIlson Allen is cited to Gay Wilson Allen, which is correct?
Gay Wilson Allen
  • In 2000 Helen Vendler argued, you've already given her full name above. Vendler is sufficient, here and in the rest of the article.
done
  • Who is Daniel Mark Epstein and why is he authoritative?
Already defined above, cut to last name
  • Ditto for C. K. Williams.
Famous poet, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  • Who is Stefan Schöberlein?
His bio describes him as: STEFAN SCHÖBERLEIN is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Iowa, a research assistant with the Walt Whitman Archive, and the managing editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. His scholarship related to Whitman has appeared in WWQR, American Literature, American Literary Realism, the Chicago Review, as well as the South Central Review. Stefan's translation of Whitman's Jack Engle into German was published in 2017. He's gone on to become a professor of English. Went with 'academic', though that's not very specific
  • The poem's speaker places their "arm beneath… singular speaker, perhaps better to use its "arm"?
I'm not quite sure what change you're asking for here -- probably my bad, but could you rephrase the comment?
Suggest you use "speaker places its "arm..." (speaker and its are singular and in subject verb object agreement. Speaker places their arm is singular singular plural and not in verb object agreement.)
OK, done
  • "ironic" by Michael C. Cohen just Cohen, he's already been identified in the article.
Sure

Thanks for your work on the article. SusunW (talk) 18:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SusunW thanks for your comments, I've responded to most of them, a couple you will probably have a response to. I gave you the in-depth reason for including some peoples opinions here and added a couple of words in the article-- if you want any more expansion let me know. Thanks again! Eddie891 Talk Work 19:45, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your quick work on these Eddie891. The descriptions you added help the reader IMO understand who the person is and that they have the authority to make observations we should care about. So, we are down to 2. The first question and the "its" one. SusunW (talk) 20:19, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
SusunW I think I've gotten everything. With regards to Did he have medical training?, the answer is essentially none. from [6], Whitman was a voluntary nurse in the American Civil War. Starting at the age of 43, he would serve for seven years in the 40 hospitals of Washington, D.C. ... His involvement in the war actually came about by mistake. Whitman traveled to Fredricksburg to find his brother George, a wounded soldier, and during his stay there, he was first exposed to the trauma of the war. Nurses had no formal education at the time, but he learned through experience alongside doctors and nurses. Gangrenous limbs, amputations, and diarrheal illnesses plagued the soldiers. In later reflections, Whitman recounted that diarrhea would often signify death for his patients. I've emailed you a copy of the article to verify that I'm not pulling quotes from thin air. Do you want me to add any of that? I think it's kinda superfluous detail to this article. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are fine. Enjoyed reading the piece you sent and if it were me, I'd call him a volunteer nurse like it does rather than a missionary, but that's your call. Everything else is cleared and I am happy to support. SusunW (talk) 14:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I had my say at the peer review. Seems to meet the criteria. I've made a few additional hands-on edits.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

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  • Autograph fair copy of Whitman's poem—signed and dated March 9, 1887—according to the 1881 edition: I don't know exactly what the last point means -- with the text as it was given in the 1881 edition, perhaps?
yeah exactly that, went with "as published in 1881"
  • The reception section suffers a bit from the A said B problem. The paragraphs are organized by theme, with e.g. the second paragraph listing some of the praise the poem has received, but it could flow more smoothly. Currently it's "Epstein wrote that... In his book, Csicsila similarly noted that...and went on to write that... In 1916 Ranking wrote that... The Literary Digest wrote in 1919 that... ". I think part of what's going on here is that we're using the quotes to imply what could be said directly. The key points from the first three paragraphs seem to be:
    • It's not a characteristic Whitman poem
    • It changed some opinions of Whitman
    • It was very popular in its day and for at least 80 years
    • It has lost popularity and critical respect over the last 50-70 years
Could the quotes be integrated a bit more into a supporting narrative for these points? In some places the article does do this -- the last two sentences of the second paragraph (The poem was not...) make a plain statement and support it with a single example; and the quote from Matthiessen, citing Cohen, is another place where the readers gets the quote and the meaning in a neat package -- but in some places it feels like a list of quotes.
  • I changed "The poem utilizes a rhyming structure" to "uses a rhyming structure", but is there a reason not to just say "The poem rhymes, and..."?
not at all
  • played across radio stations: I don't think this works; do you mean "played on many radio stations", or perhaps "played on radio stations across the country"?
went with your first suggestion

Overall this is in very good shape, but I think a little prose work is still needed in the reception section. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much, Mike Christie. I get what you're saying with the reception, but I'm not positive of the best way to actually make those changes. here's my attempt at reorganizing the reception section. Could you let me know if that's any better, worse, or somewhere in between? CHeers, Eddie891 Talk Work 18:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having a go at copyediting the reception section, but can you just confirm that the quote from Rankin is correct? It would read more naturally as "The nation's, aye, the world's, first funeral dirge". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:49, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've tweaked the first two paragraphs a bit, aiming for flow and connecting similar thoughts, and varying the rhythm a bit. How does that look? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:56, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Mike Christie I think that looks great, thanks! You're right about Rankin's quote, but it turns out that Coyle had it a bit wrong, so instead I've directly cited Rankin's work. Eddie891 Talk Work 19:08, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I figured it had to be wrong. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support — ImaginesTigers

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I'd put "comments" in the title but (as you can see) I have not yet read the article. Tagging this—expect the review tomorrow! ImaginesTigers (talk) 19:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go. I'm going to go through the article and make little changes. The main problem, as it stands, is the article is (I think) over-reliant on quotes. Ironically, although Whitman was a complicated poet, this was one of his more straightforward poems (as the article says). As a result, the criticism tends to be quite technical. To make this article more comprehensible to everyone, we really have to make sure that the jargon is stripped down. As I do my copy edit (which will be done by the time you read this, but Present-tense Tigers has not yet done), I'll be making a list here of things which really need rewording. I did read the article last night, and it’s in pretty good shape. I can't unconditionally support because of the quotation problem (which I do think needs to be resolved), but feel free to revert any of my changes that you think worsen coherency or flow. ImaginesTigers (talk) 13:07, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. So this was going to be a list, but I've been fixing things as I went along. This sentence, however, I've no idea how to fix. It is, with all affection, a monstrosity: The literary critic F. O. Matthiessen expressed a view in 1941 that Michael C. Cohen, a literature professor, considers to exemplify twentieth century opinion on the poem: "that this ballad, wholly untypical of his poems, should have been the only one to have found its way to the great world of grammar school readers is ample and ironic comment on how far Whitman's authentic idiom was from even the rudimentary means by which a wide audience is reached." I'm going to leave this one to you; my brain is broken. The quotation definitely needs to be abridged, but it’s the long constituent before the quotation that's the real issue. It’s long, awkwardly constructed, difficult to read.

To me, Style should go above Reception. This is up to you, and I realise that—the way the article is written—style is almost an off-shoot of Reception. I'll let you be the judge of that, though. I think Style is the section with the largest problems. It requires some restructuring. It starts of the way I would expect: a fairly plain description of meter, then becomes about the simple, accessible language, then structure. But then Winwar's quote, although it mentions the sing-song quality, is not actually about structure (although it directly follows it); it’s about the accessibility again. It also bounces back and forth in time really wildly. We go from 2009 to 2004, 2003 to 2005 (fair enough), but then 1999 to 1941, to 1892. Then the section ends with a huge quote, which I understand; it’s public domain at this point. But it’s just very messy. I recommend breaking things up to be a little clearer. If you're short on references for his style, I can try to do some digging for you. There's plenty here; it’s just a bit scattered in those last two paragraphs.

Themes section is really strongly written. No problems!

Okay, so. Having now finished my review, here's where we stand:

  1. The one big quotation above, and the confusing part before it, needs to be simplified. I understand what the introductory part of the sentence is convoluted, but I think you'll find a way to fix it. It can easily, I think, be split into two sentences with one reference, especially with the quotation cut down.
I've tried to do what you ask here, but I'm not positive that I did, please let me know
  1. The prose was a little flimsy in some places. I've tightened it up, I think. No objections regarding prose.
Your ce looks mostly good, I changed a few things-- mostly clarifying (de-capitalizing Warfare, 'Waltman' -> 'whitman', 'Vender' -> 'vendler', there are also a couple of things where I think you went a bit far from the sourcing so I changed them back. Let me know what you think
  1. I think the section on Style needs some restructuring; it doesn't flow as well as Reception currently does. On the note of Reception, I broke two paragraphs up and tried to clarify the gradual transition of critical consensus. I think the quotations should really be paraphrased more aggressively in Style, too, if you can.
It's an interesting thought, where style should go, and I think you're right. Moved above reception. I've tried to make it flow a little better, but I'd like to here what you think.
  1. Footnotes are pretty good, and I spot-checked ten sources in total as I went. Everything was properly attributed, no issues! I'm also pretty impressed with the wide amount of criticism; everything I thought needed to be there (Vander, Schoberlein, chiefly) was there. No big absences, so good job. side-note: Visual Editor makes it hell to check citations

Looking forward to hearing from you, Eddie! — ImaginesTigers (talk) 13:07, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ImaginesTigers thank you a lot for taking a look at this. I've had a stab at addressing your comments, now I'd like to here what you think. As is often my problem, I understand what you're saying, but I'm not positive the edit actually addressed it. Happy new year, Eddie891 Talk Work 14:01, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yup! I made a few changes and fixed a typo, but I'm really happy with the way the article is looking. It’s ready, imo. Great job, Eddie!
I support this article's promotion to FA. ImaginesTigers (talk) 14:15, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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