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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 extended metaphor or allegory allows a poet to express a feeling or tell a story without directly alluding to the particulars of the story. This poetic device allows the poet to create a poem based on the emotion of the situation instead of the specifics. The reasons a poet would do this are myriad.
The first reason is that metaphor allows for a more universal message. By changing the story from one about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination just after leading the United States through the Civil War to a story about the captain of a ship dying after leading his ship home, Whitman constructs a more universal narrative. It is no longer confined by time or situation; instead, it exemplifies the loss all might feel when losing a great leader. The best way to allow this poem to transcend its context is to write it in a metaphorical way.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
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
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