School: Education

Teacher: Yony Cárdenas Cornelio

Student: Guadalupe Roque Polo

Walt Whitman

SAN MARCOS UNIVERSITY

October 24th , 2011

Walt Whitman

His poetry externs the

Transcendentalists’ joy in

nature to a love for humanity in

all its manifestations. Whitman's verse

become a sweeping

catalogue of America

Biography

1819

• He was born in Long Island

1830

• He left school.

1855

• The first edition of Leaves of Grass.

1876, 81-89

• Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass

Analysis of Leaves of Grass

This book is notable for its delight in and praise of the senses during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world.

Free Verse

It is a poetry that has a irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure; instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

Themes

Democracy As a Way of Life

•Whitman envisioned democracy not just as a political system but as a way of experiencing the world.•He imagined democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for individuals to integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives.

The Cycle of Growth and Death•Whitman’s poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States.•Describing the life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the severe injuries and trauma he witnessed during the Civil War—linking death to life helped give the deaths of so many soldiers meaning.

The Beauty of the Individual

•He imagined a democratic nation as a unified whole composed of unique but equal individuals•Every voice and every part will carry the same weight within the single democracy—and thus every voice and every individual is equally beautiful. Despite this pluralist view, Whitman still singled out specific individuals for praise in his poetry, particularly Abraham Lincoln.

Motifs•These lists create a sense of expansiveness in the poem, as they mirror the growth of the United States. •Lists are another way of demonstrating democracy in action: in lists, all items possess equal weight, and no item is more important than another item in the list.

List• With physical contact comes spiritual communion: two

touching bodies form one individual unit of togetherness. Several poems praise the bodies of both women and men, describing them at work, at play, and interacting.

Human Body

• Often, Whitman begins several lines in a row with the same word or phrase, a literary device called anaphora.

Rhythm and Incantation

Symbols

Plants •Throughout Whitman’s poetry, plant life symbolizes both growth and multiplicity. •Rapid, regular plant growth also stands in for the rapid, regular expansion of the population of the United States.

The self •Whitman’s interest in the self ties into his praise of the individual. Whitman links the self to the conception of poetry throughout his work, envisioning the self as the birthplace of poetry. Most of his poems are spoken from the first person, using the pronoun I.

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