-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was profoundly moved by the human toll of the Civil War. When his brother, a Union soldier, was injured, Whitman became personally involved as he volunteered at field hospitals to help...
-
Walt Whitman
The most immediately obvious contrast between the two poems is in the form. Donne's poem is an English sonnet, with the slight variation that the three quatrains preceding the final couplet rhyme...
-
Walt Whitman
The poem "There was a child went forth every day" by Walt Whitman consists of a series of observations. A child goes out into the world and perceives various objects, and each of these objects...
-
Walt Whitman
I would argue that the tone shifts twice. In the beginning, the speaker introduces this child who becomes the first object he looks upon each day. The poem seems to reflect the life span of the...
-
Walt Whitman
In this very simple poem, Whitman proclaims that he hears "America singing." He proceeds then to briefly describe the individual songs of everyday workers as they go about their daily business....
-
Walt Whitman
First, it's important to note that the source of this quote is disputed. While people consistently attribute its origins to Whitman, there is no source text or context provided. That said, the...
-
Walt Whitman
The theme of Walt Whitman's poem "Miracles" is that, although we usually associate the word 'miracle' with an object or event which provokes a sense of wonder, in fact, all of existence, everything...
-
Walt Whitman
The theme of "On the Beach at Night Alone" is universality, or the sense that a "vast similitude" spans all people and things that have ever existed. The speaker in this poem, alone on the beach...
-
Walt Whitman
American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was a brilliant innovator of poetic expression and used language in ways never before seen. His Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems which he wrote and...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman's tone in "O Captain! My Captain!" is largely elegiac, in that it resembles an elegy. The poem was written in honor of President Lincoln following his assassination, and it also has...
-
Walt Whitman
In the poem Whitman conjures up many stark images on a fierce gale blowing across the ocean. His intense use of language and comparison to other powerful emotions lends itself to the...
-
Walt Whitman
Whitman's unabashed love of the diversity of American character is on full display in "I Hear America Singing." It is almost as if Whitman is walking in any American town and is taken in by how...
-
Walt Whitman
Today in America we would probably say “Blades of Grass,” but the metaphor speaks to the infinitude of things – stars, individual leaves, individual blades of grass, individual grains of sand,...
-
Walt Whitman
This poem by Walt Whitman was written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a scant five days after the official end of the Civil War on April 9, 1865. Lincoln...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman’s poetic voice displays a number of memorable and characteristic features, including the following: self-confidence plain-spokenness enthusiasm celebration joy idealism patriotism, but...
-
Walt Whitman
You don't mention a specific work - do you mean in general, or did you have a specific poem in mind? I will answer the question in a general way. Consider the following poem, taken from the link...
-
Walt Whitman
I think that the idea of how Whitman sees something internal as guiding the vessel of the soul and how Dickinson sees this guidance as external in each poem is a valid assertion. I think that both...
-
Walt Whitman
This small bit of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, eight lines, is a perfect encapsulation of Whitman’s view of nature. The “perfect silence” as he walks in the “mystical moist night-air” contrasts with...
-
Walt Whitman
This section of Drum Taps is different than those in the beginning parts. There all were excited to go off to war. None knew what war was really like. They glorified it and many were killed or...
-
Walt Whitman
Scholars agree that Walt Whitman felt inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's stated need for America to have its own American poet. Emerson saw all of America as one great poem that was left "unsung"...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was a poet who seemed to write in many different genres (some have deemed him a Realist, a Romantic and a Transcendentalist). Renowned for his use of nature and open sexually explicit...
-
Walt Whitman
Both Whitman and Dickinson present death not as a final ending point, but as something that can be transcended. To explore this, let us look at two oft-quoted passages from each poet. Here is an...
-
Walt Whitman
I assume this question is asking about which universal themes are present in Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric," or about how Whitman explores the universality of the body in this poem. For some...
-
Walt Whitman
Whitman's main literary device in Leaves of Grass (1855-87), which appears in nearly every section of the poem, is metaphor or simile, a characteristic of Whitman's poetic style. In addition,...
-
Walt Whitman
In his poem, Whitman goes through and lists many different types of people at work, singing their songs happily. This is a representation of how he felt that America was a beautiful place, and how...
-
Walt Whitman
I think that Whitman's greatest contribution to both Transcendentalism and American democracy was in his basic assertion of American freedom the lies within individual choice. Whitman's belief of...
-
Walt Whitman
I think that one of the most leading ideas that emerges from Whitman's letter is his passionate belief in Emerson's notion of a defining American literary tradition emerging. Whitman believes in...
-
Walt Whitman
What I'll do is I'll go stanza by stanza, identifying the main message within each, and then look at how each ties together at the end. Lover divine and perfect Comrade, / Waiting content,...
-
Walt Whitman
The scenes you refer to are, I assume, the episodes at the end of the section about heroism. Whitman says, “I understand the large hearts of heroes, / The courage of present times and all times.”...
-
Walt Whitman
I believe the poem is titled, "The Voice of The Rain." In the poem, the rain is personified and the speaker of the poem asks it directly to explain itself. The rain responds by talking of how it is...
-
Walt Whitman
While Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson came to prominence at the end of the Romantic/Transcendentalist movement, they both share aspects of the Romantic writers. First and foremost, they both share...
-
Walt Whitman
I like the style of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (he was the primary author, though others contributed and helped in the final version) and believe it is more effective. It is written...
-
Walt Whitman
This is something of a tough assignment, but don't get too caught up in finding the one right answer. I'll try to help with the Stevens' poem. The Stevens poem offers a more conversational or...
-
Walt Whitman
"I Sit and Look Out" is a poem about Walt Whitman regarding the cruelty of human nature and the sins of people. The entire poem has a negative tone, and there are no positive images to be found in...
-
Walt Whitman
It’s hard to imagine Whitman writing in anything other than free verse, a form that he largely invented. Partly, this is because of his subject matter, which is nothing less than the totality of...
-
Walt Whitman
The speaker says this because that is how he thinks the spirits of average Americans should be. This is what he thinks the American soul is like. In this poem, the speaker is talking about his...
-
Walt Whitman
The title itself refers to the answer of this one, along with many of the different types of people that Whitman mentions. In this poem, he discusses the pioneers who forge ahead to lay the...
-
Walt Whitman
Whitman tells us exactly who the singers are. He lists them out. There are mechanics and masons, carpenters and boatmen. There are men and women -- we see women sewing and washing. All of them...
-
Walt Whitman
"I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman is a celebration of Americans and the simple tasks or jobs they do every day. In this poem, "singing" is a metaphor for the sounds of each person's daily...
-
Walt Whitman
Quite simply, he compares a spider, in the midst of weaving its web, with the narrator's soul. "A Noiseless Patient Spider" was included in the 1891-92 Leaves of Grass in a cluster called...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was what we can an iconoclast, literally someone who breaks the icons. An iconoclast is someone who "seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions." In...
-
Walt Whitman
Walk Whitman was an unconventional American poet whose work had an enormous impact upon new developments and trends in poetry at the end of the 19th century, and widely influenced American poetry...
-
Walt Whitman
Thoreau once remarked that ....The actual object which one man will see from a particular hill top is just as different from those another will see as the beholders are different; we can not see...
-
Walt Whitman
You'll probably get a lot of different answers to this question, but I'll start. Emerson called for a "new" American literature, a literature worthy of the scope, size, and newness of the American...
-
Walt Whitman
First of all, this poem is an elegy. Disillusioned with President Pierce, Whitman felt that he had found an ideal in Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was shot after the North's success in the Civil...
-
Walt Whitman
This poem is a joyous reflection of the many working people in America, and how they are going about their day, strong, happy, healthy, and good at their jobs. The theme is productivity, or...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman expresses war’s destructive nature with an underlying religious connotation in his poem “A Sight In Camp In the Daybreak Gray and Dim.” As the poem’s narrator walks into a dim, gray...
-
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman wrote of the divinity of the self (the "I" in his poems has been reborn as something divine) and of the individual as well as the community of man as in his "Leaves of Grass." Whitman...
-
Walt Whitman
The poem was a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated in 1865, the year in which the poem was written. The poem is divided into three stanzas. The first stanza begins in a...
-
Walt Whitman
In this quote, Walt Whitman is discussing one of his favorite themes, and that is the concept of celebrating who he is as a human being, even if it is flawed, contradictory, or imperfect. Whitman...