Leaves of Grass: Subjects and Style
Whitman's poetry is democratic in both its subject matter and its language. We see Whitman breaking new ground in both subject matter and diction. Subjects: the new America; himself The stated mission of his poetry was, in his words, to make "[a]n attempt to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the 19th century, in America) freely, fully, and truly on record."
Leaves of Grass
The critical and popular response to Leaves of Grass was mixed and bewildered. The majority of the readers who happened to have come upon the book seem to have been simply indifferent.
Leaves of Grass: Subjects and Style
Whitman's great subject was America, but he wrote on an expansive variety of smaller subjects to accomplish the task of capturing the essence of this country. Some of his many subjects included slavery, democracy, the various occupations and types of work, the American landscape, the sea, the natural world, the Civil War, education, aging, death and immortality, poverty, romantic love, spirituality, and social change.
Leaves of Grass
Well-known poems in the 1855 edition include "Song of Myself," a long poem in fifty-two sections, which is considered by many to be his masterpiece. It contains such notable lines as "I am large, I contain multitudes" and "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
Leaves of Grass: Imagery
Imagery is any literary reference to the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste). Essentially, imagery is a group of words that create a mental image. Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification. Imagery is also the term used to refer to the creation (or re-creation) of any experience in the mind .
Leaves of Grass: Subjects and Style
Whitman's greatest legacy is his invention of a truly American free verse. Although written in free verse, meaning that it is not strictly metered or rhymed, sections of Leaves of Grass approach iambic meter.
Leaves of Grass: Subjects and Style
Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into repeated patterns, called feet. Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable. Shakespeare often uses iambic, for example the beginning of Hamlet's speech, "To be or not to be. " "Come live with me and be my love."
Leaves of Grass
Upon publication, he sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The letter from Emerson included the now famous line: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career.“ Leaves of Grass grew through its five subsequent versions in eight editions into a hefty book of 389 poems, in fourteen sprawling sections: Each section is selfcontained, as if it were aves of Grass: Subjects and Style
Trochaic: a foot consisting of an accented and unaccented syllable. Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the accented syllable is italicized): "By the shores of GitcheGumee By the shining Big-Sea-water." The three witches' speech in Macbeth uses it: "Double, double, toil and trouble."
Leaves of Grass
Reactions to Whitman have been at both extremes: his book has been banned for sensuality one decade, and then praised as the cornerstone of American poetics the next. With the upcoming 150th anniversary, America's poets and critics have found unmediated love for our most American poet, the man who came to shape their ideas of nationhood, democracy, and freedom. It is unlikely to become a buried masterpiece again.
Leaves of Grass
On July 4, 2005, we celebrated the 150th anniversary of what is possibly the greatest book of American poetry ever written. in 1855, Walt Whitman published his first edition of Leaves of Grass, a slim volume consisting of twelve untitled poems and a preface.
Leaves of Grass
A few weeks after the book’s publication, Emerson acknowledged the gift in a letter in which declared that he found "incomparable things said incomparably well" in Leaves of Grass. The praise from the author of "Self-Reliance" and "The Poet" was enough to outweigh the indifference or hostility of all other readers and to start Whitman on his plans for the 1856 edition.