17 pages • 34 minutes read
Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The poem lays out its argument in reader-friendly diction and without the labored elements of stylistic flair and decorative linguistic touches typical of poetry of Whitman’s era. The poem rejects the studied verbal dexterity of rhythm and rhyme, finding within the conversational immediacy of free verse a way to connect with the American masses, the lifeblood of American democracy. The poem does not read like a poem, does not scan like a poem. In this, the poem sings free of the oppressive constructs and predictable formulas of European (read British) poetics. It is an American poem celebrating American uniqueness in a distinctly American voice. Interestingly, “America” is the only Whitman poem the poet himself recorded, although only the first four lines, on a wax cylinder just months before his death.
But what exactly are the elements of the American experiment? Just over a century after the American Revolution, that experiment was still being defined and refined. Two elements are crucial to Whitman’s hymn: Americans’ similarity and their tradition of freedom, that is, how alike Americans are despite their rich diversity, and how they all theoretically enjoy a kind of freedom—social, political, economic, and religious—unprecedented in the annals of human (read European) history.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman