Analysis Of I Hear America Singing By Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was one of early America’s most influential poets. His poetry themes and style of writing were influenced by his surroundings- democracy, nature, love and death. Whitman cataloged the growth, beauty and growing pains of a young America right up until his death on March 26th, 1892. He believed that America was unique from its predecessor, and tradition was not to something to be followed, but rather life in America was to be embraced as a unique opportunity. Whitman’s writing style, like America, was unique. Whitman did not embrace the formal rhyme scheme or structure as popular with the traditional rules of European poetry. Whitman’s poetry is famous for its unconventional “free-style”, using imagery, lists, stanzas of different …show more content…
In most of “I Hear America Singing” Whitman used lists and similar phrasing to combine a wide range of thoughts without signifying an order of importance to each presented idea or thought. Presenting material in this manner allowed Whitman to catalog America in a raw and exposed form. Whitman avoided using the popular structure of his time- rhyme scheme, symbolic language, and metaphors. (Kaplan, 233) Whitman felt the writer or poet should not aim to shape the reader’s ideas, he instead intended to create a sympathetic experience for the reader from which they would draw their own conclusions. Whitman’s unique writing style ultimately led him to be coined the “father of free verse.” Stanzas were composed of different lengths and at times sounded like a stream-of-consciousness, which can be seen in Whitman’s poem “A child said, what is the grass?” The lack of structure reflects the struggle the speaker undergoes when attempting to answer the child’s question “what is the grass?” The speaker answers as if the reader were in his mind, going through lists and possibilities, as opposed to presenting his final assessment or