Walt Whitman Legacy
Walt Whitman’s Legacy in American Free Verse
An American poet who desired to stand out from the crowd. At the time, free verse appeared to be strange poetry writing format that didn’t have any rules. But Walt Whitman learnt to embrace this form of writing, and is known today for it.
Walt Whitman was a transcendentalist who expressed his beliefs and perspective freely. He chose to cover a diverse array of themes ranging from elegies, democracy, equality , death and growth to sexuality. Thus he employed free verse as his mode of writing since it gave him the liberty to elucidate on various topics and themes.
It was a feat to perfect it at his time, as poets rarely used this type of format. Many would say that Walt Whitman introduced free …show more content…
His free verse was mostly prose-like. Whitman simply produced sentences in mere stanzas. This broke the long held norms of writing. Some of the other poems written in this style are ‘The Sleepers’, ‘The Song of Occupations’, ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’, ‘By Blue Ontario’s Shore’ and ‘Song Of The Broadaxe’. If we looked into these pieces, we could analyze the way each was written. It would be apparent that he was attempting to find his writing style and was just experimenting with the freedom that came with free verse writing. However those who have studied Whitman’s works over the years have said there are distinct characteristics that define the kind of free verse writing he did. If we look closely at his work, we will see he used the three main techniques typical of, free verse writing. The first one is called syntactic parallelism. Whitman tend to write in sequences of coordinate clauses, from two to four lines long, based on the parallels between lines based on syntactic units within the …show more content…
The colour green is given importance as it a sigh of hope of America achieving democracy. As we journey our way through Walt Whitman’s legacy, we learn how he has adopted the style to cater to his requirements as well as change the way free verse was once used.
We should also know his way of writing was chosen with great purpose. He had written several pieces that depict this style. It meant to convey meaning whilst evoking an emotional response from the reader, as it is being read.
Walt Whitman strove to break away from literary traditions that were inherited from Europe . He felt that American art and culture needed to change. He thought writers of that time could pen down poems and stories to change the way society functioned. Thus ,he intended to popularise free verse in hope to create a difference.
He was a revolutionary with a pen , who looked to improve the future of America, only for the better. Whitman’s style enacted the undissuadable, for it was insistently refused to be confined with conventional literary models. In that sense, his style helped create a ‘newer America’ that he spoke of in his 1856 ‘Letter’. (Donald,
An American poet who desired to stand out from the crowd. At the time, free verse appeared to be strange poetry writing format that didn’t have any rules. But Walt Whitman learnt to embrace this form of writing, and is known today for it.
Walt Whitman was a transcendentalist who expressed his beliefs and perspective freely. He chose to cover a diverse array of themes ranging from elegies, democracy, equality , death and growth to sexuality. Thus he employed free verse as his mode of writing since it gave him the liberty to elucidate on various topics and themes.
It was a feat to perfect it at his time, as poets rarely used this type of format. Many would say that Walt Whitman introduced free …show more content…
His free verse was mostly prose-like. Whitman simply produced sentences in mere stanzas. This broke the long held norms of writing. Some of the other poems written in this style are ‘The Sleepers’, ‘The Song of Occupations’, ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’, ‘By Blue Ontario’s Shore’ and ‘Song Of The Broadaxe’. If we looked into these pieces, we could analyze the way each was written. It would be apparent that he was attempting to find his writing style and was just experimenting with the freedom that came with free verse writing. However those who have studied Whitman’s works over the years have said there are distinct characteristics that define the kind of free verse writing he did. If we look closely at his work, we will see he used the three main techniques typical of, free verse writing. The first one is called syntactic parallelism. Whitman tend to write in sequences of coordinate clauses, from two to four lines long, based on the parallels between lines based on syntactic units within the …show more content…
The colour green is given importance as it a sigh of hope of America achieving democracy. As we journey our way through Walt Whitman’s legacy, we learn how he has adopted the style to cater to his requirements as well as change the way free verse was once used.
We should also know his way of writing was chosen with great purpose. He had written several pieces that depict this style. It meant to convey meaning whilst evoking an emotional response from the reader, as it is being read.
Walt Whitman strove to break away from literary traditions that were inherited from Europe . He felt that American art and culture needed to change. He thought writers of that time could pen down poems and stories to change the way society functioned. Thus ,he intended to popularise free verse in hope to create a difference.
He was a revolutionary with a pen , who looked to improve the future of America, only for the better. Whitman’s style enacted the undissuadable, for it was insistently refused to be confined with conventional literary models. In that sense, his style helped create a ‘newer America’ that he spoke of in his 1856 ‘Letter’. (Donald,