• Style: free verse
1. No fixed rhyme and scheme
2. A looser and open-ended syntactical structure
3. The habit of using snapshots（快照） 4. Use of conversational image
Drum Taps
• In May 1865 Walt began printing his Civil War literature, entitled Drum-Taps. • Some of Whitman’s poems are political committed. Before and during the Civil War, he stood firmly on the side of the North. Drum Taps Drum Taps is the collection of his emotions and feelings during the period. • In Drum Taps, as a lover of peace, Whitman express much mourning for the determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory.|
Leaves of Grass
• Walt Whitman has devoted all his life to the creation of the “single” poem, Leaves of Grass .The work has nine editions. • In this giant work, openness, freedom, and individualism are all that concerned him. • His purpose is to express some new poetical feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized. He wanted to behave as a supreme individualist.
The themes in Whitman's poetry
• filled with optimistic expectation and enthusiasm about new things and new epoch.
1. The whole hard-working people The burgeoning life of cities. The fast growth of industry and wealth in cities 2. Individual value 3. Pursuit of love and happiness 4. Sexual love The individual person and his desires must be respected.
• Influences the 20th century world literature:
His works is part of western culture / many poets in France, Italy, England, and Latin America are in his debt. His poetry also influences modern American poets such as Pound, T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Carl Sandburg.
America’s first “poet of democracy” Whitman's democratic ideas govern his poetry-writing. In his famous poetry, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism (the belief that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important) are all that concerned him. Whitman brings the hard-working farmers and laborers into American literature ,attack the slavery system and racial discrimination.
Important Features in Whitman’s Poems
• The first person narrator: “I” the subject in the poem, “you” the reader Invites us to participate in the process of sympathetic identification.
• Back to New York City to work as a printer and journalist • Experienced various jobs • Began writing a new kind of poetry (free verse)
Whitman's democratic ideals& individualism
• 1. 2. 3.
Rhyme a rhythm of thought cadences of his feeling Parallelism To repeat the idea in the lines with minor changes in wording (the line is the rhythmical unit)
Wbrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you Excerpt from Song of
4. Phonetic recurrence Repetition of the words and phrases
first
works
• • • • • Leaves of Grass Songs of Myself There was a Child Went forth I hear America sining Drum Taps
Leaves of Grass
• Whitman’s originality first in his use of the poetic form free verse (i.e. poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme) • The first version of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, appeared in 1855. • Emerson praised Whitman’s poetry as “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet to contribute.”
Song of Myself
• Song of Myself was originally published in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass in which it was the first of twelve poems. At the time this poem was untitled, in 1881 Whitman gave the poem its final name: Song of Myself. • In Song of Myself, Whitman believed that two people could be “twain yet one”, their paths could be different, and yet they could achieve a kind of transcendent contact. • Song of Myself is a history of the poet’s movement from loafing individual to active spirit.
Leaves of Grass
• Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-masse” and the self as well. Whitman also gives emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly celebrates sexuality. • Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly affectionately in his lines. • If two persons are really in love, “what is to us what the rest do or think?” The individual person and his desires must be respected. Obviously, Whitman’s sexual themes are beyond the physical.
Influence
America’s first “poet of democracy”