Essay on Walt Whitman

    From looking at the titles of Walt Whitman's vast collection of poetry in Leaves of Grass one would be able to surmise that the great American poet wrote about many subjects -- expressing his ideas and thoughts about everything from religion to Abraham Lincoln. Quite the opposite is true, Walt Whitman wrote only about a single subject which was so powerful in the mind of the poet that it consumed him to the point that whatever he wrote echoed of that subject. The beliefs and tenets of transcendentalism were the subjects that caused Whitman to write and carried through not only in the wording and imagery of his poems, but also in the revolutionary way that he chose to write his poetry.

Walt Whitman was a revolutionary poet who let his emotions run free through his poetry. Whitman was never afraid to express himself no matter how inappropriate or offensive his emotions might have seemed at the time. This is why Whitman's poem still echo that same sentiment and emotion today almost as loudly as when the drums were first tapped.

Whitman wrote broad stanzas and focused on the whole of America as his inspiration. His lines covered a wide range of topics and generated multiple points of view for the reader. He called his life’s work “Leaves of Grass”; stressing the

Whitman was able to change people’s views on life and was able to give people something that they wanted and were looking for in his creation of a new writing style. His writing about real life experiences connected him well with the common man, which is another aspect of the Romantic period. Whitman is also thought of as the “father of free verse.” He enjoyed using free verse because it could further distinguish him from other writers of the past, and of his time.

Throughout the globe, as well as history, there are countless forms of poetry known to man. Each distinctive form has a different format, set of rules, rhymes, and even meters. All of these methods can work together to form different combinations unique to certain poems. Every combination of formatting or rules gives unique power and structure to the poem.Whatever form of poem the author desires to envision their message with will completely change how the message is perceived. In both Walt Whitman’s, “I Hear America Singing”, and Alice Walker’s, “Women” the free verse format is selected, allowing freedom of word selection, plot freedom, as well as length freedom.

While this appears to be a loss of the sense of self as a discrete individual, it actually lends power to the individual, who now becomes “part of the scheme” (89). Each man within the crowd has a role to play in the forming of a coherent organic whole. By transporting his poetic self from his own time and place to the time and place of the reader through the repetition of the phrase “Just as you… I” (90), Whitman blurs the line that separates poet and reader,

After studying American author, Walt Whitman, it is clear that he has had a long lasting impact on society and the lives of authors and artists who came after him. Through works like Democratic Vistas and Song of Myself, Whitman gave American society tools to promote creative expression and the essence of democracy. However, Whitman’s methods had to be adopted over time to touch/bring attention to different social issues. Two authors who were able to branch off of Whitman’s works and ideas were Isadora Duncan and James Baldwin. By analyzing these two important characters of history, we will be able explore two different social issues in two different eras and how Duncan and Baldwin refined Whitman’s approach in order to make a statement in society. It’s significant to identify the importance of these artists because this process is still relevant in today’s society, adapting from Whitman in order to get points across and make a difference.

Walt Whitman is considered one of the most important writers in the history of American Literature. The people of his own time called him a radical, a madman, and a pornographer. These days he is greatly appreciated and entitled as a fearless prophet of a new stage of human development. Sometimes Whitman would be in a slump and he felt that he needed to deflect the people who inquired too directly. This even meant using examples of homosexual elements in his work, as well as unbelievable stories of him having affairs with numerous women and fathering many children, unknown to him. Throughout these sorts of times W. Whitman has gone through both resentment and flattery, nevertheless showing us

On this verse, we can see how Whitman tries to connect to mind, body, spirit and nature. In “Song of Myself” Whitman attempted to change the meaning of American poetry. I described identity issues that pertain to him, but that the audience was able to identify with. Whitman, opened the door to

Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s life legacy and at the same time the most praised and condemned book of poetry. Although fearful of social scorn, there are several poems in Leaves of Grass that are more explicit in showing the homoerotic imagery, whereas there are several subtle – should I say “implicit” – images woven into the fabric of the book. It is not strange, then, that he created many different identities in order to remain safe. What Whitman faced in writing his poetry was the difficulty in describing and resonating manly and homosexual love. He was to find another voice of his, a rhetoric device, and his effort took two forms: simplified, and subverted word play.

Along with the use of metaphors, the form of the poem plays an important role in uncovering the views of Whitman. First and foremost, this poem was written in free verse which is a form of poetry that lacks structure. The free verse stucture of the poem is shown in the lack of form in the stanzas of the poem. Some stanzas are six lines long while others are only one, and the lines can be either concise or drawn out. The poem also lacks any apparent rhyming scheme or rhythm. Unlike Shakespearean poetry, where the foot of the poem stays the same, the lack of any apparent structure to the poem leaves the reader unable to predict what is coming next. In addition to this, at the time this poem was written, free verse was not common. In fact, Whitman may have been one of the first poets to use this form, showing that he may have been rebelling against the predominant structured form in poetry. The lack of any apparent structure guides the reader towards the conclusion that Whitman did not like structure in poetry, and can even be

Walt Whitman, a civil war nurse was a self-taught poet in the 1800s. Whitman is known for using lists, anaphora, free verse, and other literary devices in his poems. In his works, he focuses on American workers, diversity, transcendent approaches to nature, and individualism. “Song of Myself,” a poem written by Whitman, explores themes of nature, sex, democracy, and spirituality. Whitman uses nature to fuel his creativity in using grass as a symbol of comparison to life by using imagery, metaphors, and analogies.

In his poems and life, Walt Whitman celebrated the human spirit and the human body. He sang the praises of democracy and marveled at the technological advances of his era. His direct poetic style shocked many of his contemporaries. This style, for which Whitman is famous, is in direct relation to several major American cultural developments. The development of American dictionaries, the growth of baseball, the evolution of Native American policy, and the development of photography all played a part and became essential components of Whitman’s poetry.

Many critics states Walt Whitman as the best American poet. The publication of Leaves of grass in 1855 marked the beginning of a new poetry. The most innovative thing about Whitman’s poetry was the fact that he completely abandoned all the traditional form of writing poetry and their rules about rhyme meter and length. Instead of using traditional farm of poetry writing he uses free verse to write poetry. This is the style that most modern and contemporary poetry is written in. Whitman abandoned traditional meter patterns in favor of free verse. Free verse is the poetic verse written completely free, without rigid rules or predictable patterns. The tone and content of his poems were also very original. To most of his readers, he sounded alive,

Whitman is known for being revolutionary for his use of free form verse in the nineteenth century. This style is evident throughout Song of Myself which aids in his descriptions and devices used to get his meaning across. His grouping of three lines per stanza for this section is common for the entirety of “Song of Myself”, which has variations of three line to occasionally five line stanzas. His freedom in his poem’s style and lack of rhyme scheme allow him to fully showcase his thoughts in a new way for this time period. An overall summary of the poem is Whitman’s pondering of himself and the world in behavior and personality to him being fully confident in himself with no existential crisis. For the first half of section 20, Whitman’s character of himself questions everything beyond the ownership of himself. He questions the integrity of other people’s identities and characters as well as ignoring social norms involving manners and religious behavior. The declaration of a lack of manners and questioning the church would have been scandalous to