Introduction Main body

Content.
Plan.

1. 
   Introduction……………………………………………………..1
   
2. 
   Main body……………………………………………………….2
   

1. 
   Elements of Walt Whitman's poetry……………………………5
   
2. 
   "Whitman's Poetics and the Unity of 'Calamus"……………….16
   
3. 
   Walt Whitman as a poet of democracy…………………………19
   
4. 
   Walt Whitman - The Poetry of the Future………………………25
   
5. 
   Walt Whitman: Poems Whitman's influence on American writers and leaders……………………………………………………………28
   

3. 
   Conclusion……………………………………………………….33
   
4. 
   References………………………………………………………..34
   

Introduction.

When having to think about the philosophy of Americanness, who else could come to one's mind other than Walt Whitman. One of the most read, most enjoyable writers of American Literature so much debated and gossiped about, preceding his own folk's and the world's age by light-years ahead, throwing himself in the face of his contemporary readers, at last knocking down all the remains of the long-suffered puritan establishments and values that the country has carried as a burden for far too long. One simply cannot exclude Whitman without having to make a comment about his poetry - his art - he simply cannot be ignored, for he and his art does not allow that.
Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass¹, he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in death. Along with Emily Dickinson, Whitman is regarded as one of America’s most significant 19th-century poets and would influence later many poets, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Simon Ortiz, C.K. Williams, and Martín Espada. Born on Long Island, Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and received limited formal education. His occupations during his lifetime included printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and editor. 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. This important publication underwent eight subsequent editions during his lifetime as Whitman expanded and revised the poetry and added more to the original collection of 12 poems. Emerson himself declared the first edition was “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”
Whitman published his own enthusiastic review of Leaves of Grass. Critics and readers alike, however, found both Whitman’s style and subject matter unnerving. According to The Longman Anthology of Poetry, “Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons: this openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations.” A poet who “abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns” of his contemporaries, Whitman was “influenced by the long cadences and rhetorical strategies of Biblical poetry.” Upon publishing Leaves of Grass, Whitman was subsequently fired from his job with the Department of the Interior. Despite his mixed critical reception in the US, he was favorably received in England, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne among the British writers who celebrated his work. During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, DC. For three years, he visited soldiers during his spare time, dressing wounds and giving solace to the injured. These experiences led to the poems in his 1865 publication, Drum-Taps, which includes, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s elegy for President Lincoln. After suffering a serious stroke in 1873, Whitman moved to his brother’s home in Camden, New Jersey. While his poetry failed to garner popular attention from his American readership during his lifetime, over 1,000 people came to view his funeral. And as the first writer of a truly American poetry, Whitman’s legacy endures.

Elements of Walt Whitman's poetry.

Born on May 31, 1819, as the second son of Walter Whitman, Walt Whitman began his love for writing at the age of 12. Pursuing his love for writing, he got himself acquainted with great writers like homer, Dante and Shakespeare and their works. He then founded a weekly newspaper in 1848 after working in one. In 1855, the first edition of his ‘Leaves of Grass’ was published which was made of 3 poems, Song of Myself inclusive. Working at the hospitals during the outbreak of the civil war around the late 1860’s was an inspiration to his writings. He spent his late years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volumes of poems and prose.
This poem, ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman is a journey and realisation of one’s self. Its journey is described and divided into 52 parts. The poem is an explication of the poet himself. He enjoys the comfort of himself, relaxing and appreciating the environment he finds himself in. he takes time to give us a detailed analysis of himself. He also does an appreciation of nature². The ‘self’ in this poem is an entity who is constant through all the events and experiences which are an essential part of life. In subsequent paragraphs, I shall be describing what I find interesting in Walt Whitman’s ‘song of myself’.
His use of imagery is exceptional in the poem as he describes in details his environment and nature. He describes the air, sounds, smells and nature in general.
‘Houses and rooms are full of perfumes; the shelves are crowded with perfumes…..