Walt Whitman is known as the embodiment of free verse. He fabricates his poetry to flow
without a specific rhythm. His outspoken style revolutionized the way poetry expressed war, the beauty of life, and natural desires.
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 at West Hills in the town of Huntington, Long Island. At an early age his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, in search of work (Biography of Walt Whitman). The Whitmans constantly moved around in Brooklyn, as his father, who was speculating in real estate, would purchase empty lots, build a house, move the family in, then sell it for profit and so on. Yet he was unsuccessful in his business. Living in the city of Brooklyn has played a major role in Walt Whitman’s poetry. When Walt was six-years old, he met General Lafayette, an American hero who fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and was embraced by him, leaving Walt with the idea that this hero had imprinted him with the ability to express ideas about democracy and freedom in his work. Living close to the East River, he grew a liking to ferry boats. So much in fact, that he dedicated a poem about crossing the river to Manhattan, portraying the scenery as enticing and beautiful, seeing the river and the sky, the men, the women and children walking along in the distance, and the motion of the boat on the water. Walt Whitman’s grandparents lived near the shore of Long Island and during the visits young Walt developed a lifelong love with the landscape of the area.. The landscape is what created the desire to express nature and what made Walt want to persevere in becoming a poet, as he sensed the mystery of water meeting land , the moon connecting with the sea, and the waves colliding with other waves. (Walt Whitman)
Being the second child of nine children in a family that was low on income, made it extremely difficult for Walt to attain a proper education. He attended public school for only six years and turned to labor to help support his family. He first began working as an office boy under the wing of several lawyers from Brooklyn, who gave him a subscription to a library, where his self-education began. The following year he began working for the Long Island Patriot, a liberal, working-class newspaper (Walt Whitman Archive). While working in the printing industry, Whitman became familiar with the famous works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and The Bible. (Academy of American Poets). His first published article was in New York’s The Mirror in 1834, years after he had entered the printing industry. Whitman’s experience of publishing his very own work fascinated him; the idea of communicating to people through his writing was an exhilarating feeling, “How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white paper, in nice type.”
Several years later, he began his career working as a journalist editing newspapers such as the New York Aurora, Daily Eagle, The Freeman, and the Times (Salem) which provided him the atmosphere of how written works or manuscripts can be printed and the exposure of the written word to a wide audience. His experiences inside and outside the printing industry incorporated the basis of his poetry. During this time there were many social and political issues such as slavery, prostitution, and democratic representation, themes that he incorporated in his writings. While working for the New Orleans Crescent in 1848, Whitman witnessed the separation of black families being auctioned into slavery (Academy of American Poets). His antislavery views is what caused him to quit his job there and moved back to Brooklyn where he would proceed to become the founding editor of the Brooklyn Freeman, a “free soil” antislavery organ in 1849 (American National Biography).
Walt Whitman’s major achievements stems off his book, Leaves of Grass, which traces the geographical, social, and spiritual contours of an expanding nation. Leaves of Grass consists of twelve untitled poems and it is what introduced free verse in the poetry world. Since the initial release in 1855, Walt continued to modify the book, publishing many revised editions until his death on March 26, 1892 (Academy of American Poets). Song of Myself, another prominent work of Walt Whitman, is the expanded version of the poem Song of Myself in Leaves of Grass. This piece of work is the essence of transcendentalism and it celebrates Whitman as the representative of all humankind (Biography of Walt Whitman), connecting himself and the reader at a raw and intimate level. The theme of self and sexuality is Whitman’s great revolutionary theme.
Whitman first handedly watched the United States divide itself because of the issue of slavery. His experience from witnessing black slaves being separated from their families, and the states separating from the Union, impacted Whitman’s writing in a way that it made him the voice of democracy and essentially the voice of America.
Transcendentalism is a major component in Whitman’s life. His transcendentalist ideas can be derived from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is an icon in the Transcendentalist Movement and a major influencer on Whitman’s work. Many of the poems in Leaves of Grass extend Emerson’s proclamation in Nature (1836) that nature is the emblem of the soul and, hence, God. “I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.” Whitman allegedly declared (American National Biography). When Leaves of Grass was released, Whitman had sent Emerson a copy and Emerson responded with, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” noting that Leaves of Grass “meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.” Emerson believed that Whitman’s poetry would put the country in shape (Walt Whitman Archive).
Walt Whitman believed that poetry must be written to express every aspect of the being, especially at its most intimate. Sexuality is, for Whitman, the most sacred dimension of human physicality and the ultimate means of communication between two individuals (Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 9). This goes along with Transcendentalism because as nature is to spirituality, Whitman defined sexual experience as a spiritual experience (Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia).
Free verse is Walt Whitman’s trademark that impacted the poetry world by revolutionizing the way people can express themselves without upholding a certain rhythm or a specific rule. This technique is present in Song of Myself:
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine.
In this stanza there is no rhythm, it is just thought. Raw, pure thought that went from soul to paper, without a need of stripping it of its simplicity into a more complex and intricate pattern of words. This technique is what separates Whitman from previous poets because when reading Whitman’s poetry you see yourself writing it, you see yourself thinking every thought, the words on every line seem as if Whitman was writing to himself, as a diary, which goes back to the title: Song of Myself.
All in all, Walt Whitman’s legacy stems off his impact of expressing the authenticity of man in his descriptions of war, sex, and life. Those descriptions being the Americans during the Civil War, love being expressed intimately, and life being nature that surrounds humans. His poetry has revolutionized the method of pattern by using free verse that allows poetry to flow without a pattern.