Whitman :: essays research papers

Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and potent writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitmans writing is so stop form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his precise democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitmans writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other whence its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitmans work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his multiplication such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of let off association. When people say Whitman has no style, they are making a mastery about his adherence to conventional standards of poet ic form. Style, though, is something completely personal, not conventional. Whitman dared to go outside the conventional boundaries of poetic expression be subject he seldom followed the standards in rhyme, meter, and stanza form. However, hasnt every bang-up poet changed the rules governing the creation of great art in some way or another? Without a doubt they have, that defines them as great poets and gives them style. Whitmans greatness lies in his divergence from the norm, his individuality, not his strict adherence to the arbitrary rules of his predecessors. Whitmans 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(a) of the feelings that are evoked from Whitmans style can be classified as quintessentially A merican 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. Whitmans technique of looking at everything as a self-colored 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.