Analysis Of Poem Of Song Of Myself By Walt Whitman

For ages, humans have relied on poetry as a form of expression. From the ancients to the modernists, poetry has survived. At least, the word “poetry” itself has survived. Poetry is continually changing. What was once a very pattern-oriented, structured art with tight boundaries has transformed into, quite frankly, anything its author wants it to be. Therefore, as opposed to the pedantic nature of older poetry, modern poetry has become more free, with less focus on intense organization, which allows the modern poet to have complete creative control over their work.
In particular, older society was centered around etiquette. This explains the use of stiff patterns throughout poetry; going against tradition was practically a crime. The people …show more content…
Authors such as Walt Whitman broke many assumed rules of poetry, or at least those set by his predecessors. For instance, in “18” of Song of Myself, Whitman uses no obvious, gimmicky rhyme. The closest thing to a rhyme in this poem is “come” and “drums” (Whitman 80), which seems more like an effective use of meter rather than a purposeful rhyme. This strong use of meter is evident when one reads the poem; it at first does not appear to be a poem by society’s standards, but the words seem to “fit” even though unbelievably they do not rhyme. It is as if one read a poem in paragraph form, similar to prose, but with the feel of a pattern. This use of free form brought to light a new “definition” of poetry, one that has less requirements than the ones before it. Sonnets and patterns are still extremely common in this time period, but there are more instances of authors who chose to resist against the standard poem. Authors like Whitman added onto what poetry could potentially be, not just strict rhyme and regulation but also free, honest, and …show more content…
Cummings that add a dimension to poetry that breaks even the simplest definition of a poem. Cummings’s “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r" poem is more similar to a code needing deciphering rather than a poem. There are no stanzas or verses, no meter, and no rhyme. This poem is truly whatever the author wants it to be, not a product of the literary regulation that is rhyme pattern. At this point, poetry has come “full circle”; strict rhymes have turned into the true freedom to write whatever one wishes, so long as they use the alphabet. There are poems that do not even use full words to get a message across, such as “l(a” by Cummings. Authors like himself opened the doors to true poetry in the modern sense: that which has no actual