Walt Whitman According to the critics, Walt Whitman is one of America's most inspiring and imaginative poets. Taking ordinary thoughts, Whitman develops ingenious and beautiful stanzas that capture the attention of readers to this day. "Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul" (ThinkExist). Taking everyday moments, Whitman provides descriptive, yet intriguing ideas pertaining to the human soul. As many past authors, Whitman's life outside of being a writer
names such as TS Eliot, John Ashbery, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson come to mind, but also at the top of that list would be Walt Whitman. He is known for many poems written in his lifetime that were written sporadically as he experienced life. Whitman wrote about what he saw and what he felt; he was not concerned about the uproar his words may cause. The life of Walt Whitman was really a tragic one but through his writing he touched many people, both in America and around the world. He was born in
Walt Whitman Walt Whitman was a follower of the two Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He believed in Emerson and Thoreau’s Trascendentalist beliefs. Whitman believed that individualism stems from listening to one’s inner voice and that one’s life is guided by one’s intuition. The Transcendentalist centered on the divinity of each individual; but this divinity could be self-discovered only if the person had the independence of mind to do so. Whitman lent himself to this
contained more than twenty-four poems, which were reasonably filled with ten or more diversified types of themes. Walt Whitman the author and compiler of this exceptional work changed the status of poetry writing through his utilization of thought and expression in the publication of the Leaves of Grass. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a collogue and admirer of Walt once spoke this of him '…Whitman, that Sir, is a strange case, a case unknown to any of us, unless we should stumble upon him at church one day…';(Chase
Walt Whitman was looked upon as the forerunner of 20th Century poetry, praising democracy, and becoming a proclaimed poet of American democracy. He was known as the "Son of Long Island," and he loved his country and everything about it. (Current, Williams, Freidel- page 292-293). Whitman lived during the time of the Civil War; a fact that increased his patriotism. Whitman was considered one of the most important American Poets of the 19th Century. (Encyclopedia of World Biography- page
In Walt Whitman's pastoral elegy, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", he successfully depicts how nature and citizens mourn Abraham Lincoln's death after his assassination in 1865. He flawlessly incorporates numerous poetic devices and methodically places them throughout his literary work. One of the poetic devices that he continues to use is parallelism. Walt Whitman's inclusion of parallelism contributes to the successful style of the poem by adding to the lyrical flow, creating emphasis
Walt Whitman Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, New York. He was the second of six children. From 1825-1830, he attended public school in Brooklyn. After his years of education, Walt Whitman experimented with many different jobs. From 1836-1838, Whitman taught at several schools in Long Island. After teaching, Walt Whitman returned to printing and editing in New York. During this time he edited many papers such as the Aurora (daily newspaper), Evening Tattler
innovative orchestrators of American poetry. Walt Whitman set himself apart from the traditional rules that governed poetry. Whitman contrasted sharply with his contemporaries, who wrote about themes that many had already written about long before, one example being love. Many people could relate to these familiar themes and topics, which had many elements that might have been fictional or fabricated. In the poem "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," Whitman explores the idea of searching and analyzing
During the time period that Walter Whitman lived, there were many controversial things happening to the American people as a whole. One of the most strenuous upon society at the time was the Civil War. The Civil War created many problems in the lives of most Americans during this time period. This war also prompted, and inspired Walt to create many of his historical works of art. The war was raging in both the north and the south during Whitman's golden era of his writing. In the North, the economy
story through his own view of the world and with the ambition to do it was Walter Whitman. Greatly criticized by many readers of his work, Whitman was not a man to be deterred. Soon he would show the world that he had a voice, and that it spoke with a poet's words. Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Thus Whitman began his "Song of the Open Road". This paper will attempt to describe his life and