Knowra Walt Whitman Walt Whitman Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet whose free verse and expansive treatment of democracy, the body, and the self helped shape modern poetry.
Free verse : Poetry without a regular meter or rhyme scheme, organized through rhythms and structures such as syntax and repetition. Whitman’s long, irregular lines made free verse a defining feature of his poetry.
Anaphora : The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive clauses or lines. Whitman uses recurring openings to give long free-verse passages momentum and emphasis.
Democratic poetry : Poetry that engages democratic ideals through its subjects, forms, or account of collective life. Whitman’s poems give workers and ordinary people a place in an expansive national voice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson : An American essayist, lecturer, and poet who became a leading voice of Transcendentalism. Emerson’s 1855 letter praised the first edition of Leaves of Grass and helped establish its reception.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : A nineteenth-century American poet known for narrative poems and verse shaped by regular meter and rhyme. Longfellow’s formal verse offers a clear contrast with Whitman’s unrhymed, irregular lines.
Leaves of Grass : Walt Whitman’s poetry collection, first published in 1855 and revised throughout his life. This evolving collection contains the poems through which Whitman developed his poetic voice.
Parallelism : The use of similar grammatical structures in related words, phrases, or clauses. Parallel structures help Whitman’s expansive lines accumulate without relying on meter.
American Civil War poetry : Poetry responding to the causes, experiences, and consequences of the American Civil War. Whitman’s wartime poems draw on his work among wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals.
Henry David Thoreau : An American writer and naturalist known for Walden and his essays on civil disobedience. Thoreau was among the Transcendentalist contemporaries who welcomed Whitman’s early poetry.
Edgar Allan Poe : An American writer and critic known for poems and tales emphasizing musical effects, symbolism, and the uncanny. Poe’s insistence on poetic effect and formal control differs from Whitman’s expansive, public voice.
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