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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
By 1888, Whitman was confident in his reinvention of poetic form. By the time he published “America,” Whitman had become the focus of cult-like admiration among America’s younger poets who made pilgrimages to Whitman’s home in Camden, New Jersey, hoping for an audience with the courageous poet who had reimagined poetry itself in a way that had become defiantly, proudly American. Whitman Societies, complete with secret handshakes and elaborate initiation rituals, met all around Manhattan. These devoted acolytes found in Whitman’s free verse and in his celebration of the spiritual dimension of the organic world an unapologetic rejection of the middle-class complacencies and soul-numbing conventions of Gilded Age America.
“America” testifies to Whitman’s restless experiment in form. The lines defy anticipated rhythms or rhyme. To create a living, organic poem that rewards recitation, the lines use comma placement to create, like a line of crafted music, dramatic pauses that would allow for the speaker to give emphasis, for instance, to each of the adjectives the poem lists to describe Americans, emphasis that could conceivably change with each recitation. Finally, Whitman’s eccentric and grammar-defying use of capitalization gifts each capitalized term—freedom, law, love, earth,
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman