Many a student has decried various types of poetry for its form and structure while enjoying the free verse works of poets such as T. S. Elliot and Robert Frost. Students, however, frequently neglect the Civil War era poet Walt Whitman who is, to this day, considered the Father of free verse. While Whitman did not invent free verse, he secured its role in the American psyche. Even with his accomplishments, Whitman's life was not without trials; he concluded schooling and began working at age eleven. This early independence and the trials that followed forced Whtiman to seek spiritual solace to cope. Whitman's search for a greater meaning becomes evident in his poetry and drives his works. From his early works such as “There Was A Child That Went Forth” that paint the picture of Whitman as a fiercely independent young man. His middle works such as “When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer show his growing displeasure with society while Whitman's spirituality is on display in his later works such as “The Noiseless Patient Spider”.
Walter Whitman was born May 31st, 1819 in West Hills, Long Island. At the age of eleven his formal schooling was concluded and took up employment at a law firm. After the law firm Whitman began to work in journalism. By the age of fifteen Whitman was riding a daily fairy from Brooklyn to Manhattan where he interacted with the general population whom he felt “most at home” with. In 1835 Whitman was forced home, after five years as a traveling school teacher he had founded his own newspaper. After years of working in journalism and moving back in with his family to support them financially, in 1854 Whitman released his first edition of Leaves of Grass containing twelve poems. After, in Whitman's own words, “3...
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...ünther. “The Bridge to God.” Studies in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. By Harry R. Warfel. Ed. Harry R. Warfel. Gainesville, FL: Scholar’s Facsimilies & Reprints, 1954. 67- 68. Print.
"A Noiseless Patient Spider." Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition (2002): Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 24 Jan. 2010.
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Terrinoni, Enrico. "Literary Contexts in Poetry: Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" Literary Contexts in Poetry: Walt Whitman's 'Oh Captain! My Captain!' (2007): 1. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 24 Jan. 2010.
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Whitman’s work has an arguable style that makes his work appear as an egotistical piece of literature for some and others may find a different deeper meaning within his work. This work is an excellent example of patriotic work that attempts better its audience throughout by making revelations and comparisons of different idea and thoughts about the nation's people. Whitman illustrates his interpretation of what a kind of person is a great person is and how they go about life. He intends to make his audience better as a whole and understand the underlying problem that some have. Whitman's writing truly expresses his feelings about his time and what he expects from them for a better
Walt Whitman was born in 1819 to a family with seven siblings. He started work at a printing service when he was just a boy in order to help out his family financially. During his tenure in the printing industry, Whitman began to read and write. He fell in love with the art of writing and would eventually go into editing as a career. Whitman created a new style of poetry called free verse, and at the time American culture would reject this
Walt Whitman’s early life and childhood had an impact on his works of poetry later in his life. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York. His parents were Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. At the age of four, Whitman and his family moved to Brooklyn, living in a series of different houses due to bad investments by his parents. Whitman later viewed his childhood as sad and unhappy, because his family frequently moved and they were in a poor financial situation. Throughout most of his childhood, Whitman and his family were in constant financial duress. At the age of eleven, Whitman finished his formal education and started to look for a job. Whitman finished school at such a young age, so he could get a job
Throughout the span of this semester, much of the literature discussed revolved around the so-called renaissance of American literature and its impact upon both the nation and its people. Of all the authors studied in this time period, Walt Whitman may well be known as the quintessential American author. Famous for breaking every rule known to poetry in the inimitable compilation, Song of Myself, Whitman provided a fresh and insightful commentary upon the dualistic nature of society, love, and life itself. Through defining these essential aspects of humanity, Whitman indeed composed one of the most accurate and enduring definitions of the individual self that literature, American or otherwise, has ever seen. Specifically, this was done through
American poet, Walt Whitman explores the connection between the concept of the nation and the poet as a means of further establishing the national identity of the United States of America. The preface to his collection of poetry, entitled Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 merely 79 years after the United States was founded acts as a reinforcement of nationalist sensibilities that work to define what the American is on a internal and international scale. Within this text Whitman creates an inventory of the attributes that are defining of the poet as an individual, emphasizing the positive qualities as being linked to their vocation. Described as being equal to the average citizen, the poet is a symbol of the American, reinforcing the
Pedagogy is a teaching style that is used to help students learn. Teachers often have a unique pedagogy that they prefer to follow. Some teachers prefer to lecture, others model, some simply assign the work, and to each their own. “…there is some evidence of teachers abandoning formal pedagogies in favor of informal ones…” (Cain). Walt Whitman was no different; he preferred a hands on approach when it came to teaching, and through his approach, he learned as much from the student as they did from him. Walt Whitman had several ideas and themes that came from his pedagogy as recorded in Song of Myself 6, 46, and 47.
When you look back, no American author is more influencing then Walt Whitman. He is celebrated as the father of free verse.
Walt Whitman will forever live in the minds of individuals as one of America’s greatest poets. People in America and all over the world continue to read and treasure his poetry. He was an original thinker, contributing new modern styles to poetry. He was unafraid of controversy and uninhibited by what others may think of him. He created his own path in poetry, as he describes himself in an anonymous review of his poetry: "But there exists no book or fragment of a book which can have given the hint to them" (Whitman). His poetry was not inspired or affected by those who wrote before him; according to him, his poetry came entirely from "beautiful blood and a beautiful brain" (Whitman). His emphasis on originality, paradoxically, displays how Emerson, a fellow nonconformist, influenced him by stressing the importance of originality and the ability to think without being aided by other people’s words of wisdom. However, while Emerson influenced Whitman, Whitman also affected Emerson’s thoughts, as the two were friends who respected each other’s minds. Another member of this group of nonconformist friends is Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist (Baym 2078).
Whitman’s approach to poetry is a reflection of his thought. These thoughts are free and wild, and his typical run-on sentences and his endless litanies of people and places represent the thoughts trying to be conveyed. The overall effect of these run-on sentences provides the reader with a feeling of greatness and of freedom. All of the feelings that are evoked from Whitman’s style can be classified as quintessentially American democratic feelings. The belief that Whitman had no style would imply that Americans as a society have no style, a statement that not only Whitman but Emerson and Thoreau as well fought against through their writings. Whitman and Emerson fighting for the same cause is not coincidental, Whitman has often been viewed as the “child” of Emerson, his work being greatly influenced by Emerson. Whitman’s technique of looking at everything as a whole and always opposed to breaking up the whole can be linked to his belief of unity within our country and the reason why he took the Civil War extremely hard and personal.
Walt Whitman, notorious as the “American Bard”, revolutionized American poetry and improvised the form recognized as free verse. Whitman wrote the poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” which was originally published as, ““A Child’s Reminiscence”
Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island. His early years included much contact with words and writing; he worked as an office boy as a pre-teen, then later as a printer, journalist, and, briefly, a teacher, returning eventually to his first love and life’s work—writing. Despite the lack of extensive formal education, Whitman experienced literature, "reading voraciously from the literary classics and the Bible, and was deeply influenced by Goethe, Carlyle, Emerson, and Sir Walter Scott" (Introduction vii).
Walt Whitman is arguably America’s most influential poet in history. Born Walter Whitman in May 31st, 1819 to Walter Whitman and Louisa van Velsor, he was immediately nicknamed ‘Walt’ to distinguish him from his father. He came to life in West Hills on the famous Long Island, the second of nine children that grew up in Brooklyn. He came to be fondly known as ‘the Bard of Democracy’, mainly because that was a main message in his work. He is also celebrated as ‘the father of the free verse’. He was a liberal thinker and was vehemently against slavery, although later on he was against the abolitionists because, according to him, they were anti-democracy. He managed to marry transcendentalism with realism in his works. His occupation was a printer school teacher and editor.
Walt Whitman was arguable one of the most influential poets during the Civil War era. Though never directly involved in war, Whitman was able to talk about the war in a more insightful way than many poets at the time could. Whitman was most active in writing during the times before and after the war, choosing to dedicate himself to helping wounded soldiers during the war instead. Walt Whitman’s poetry reflects the progression of his philosophy of America: his initial view of America was uplifting, represented in his Pre-Civil war poems and while the Civil War poetry presents the degradation of American society, Whitman’s final poetry returns to a realistic, optimistic view for America.
He crossed the boundaries of the poetry literature and gave a poetry worth of our democracy that contributed to an immense variety of people, nationalities, races. Whitman’s self-published Leaves of Grass was inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson (Poetry Foundation). He always believed in everyone being treated equally and bringing an end to slavery and racism. Through his poetry, Whitman tried to bring every people in America together by showing them what happiness, love, unison, and real knowledge looked. His poetry and its revolution changed the world of American literature
Whitman used a form of poetry that is highly influenced to a lot of new age poets of today. Whitman was well-known for using free verse style in his writings. While there are other poets that used this style before Whitman, such as Ezra Pound, Whitman was credited as one of the best poets and probably one of the founding fathers of free verse poetry. It is a literary device for poetry that, for lack of better phrase, “break the rules.” Free verse is a style that lets the poem flow without the use of rhythm or the use of rhyming at the end of lines. By today's standards, free verse poetry is used commonly among new age poets because of its rebellious writings and freedom to write with a better