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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.
Walt Whitman is often credited as the father of free verse and sometimes the father of American poetry. Prior to Whitman, European poetry was formal, usually depicting high-ranking persons and referencing ancient Greek and Roman myths or histories. It was assumed poetry would be read by an educated and elite audience. Instead, Whitman created a form that was distinctly American to document the American experience. His work gave voice to a new philosophy of the country and its people.
In the age of Romanticism, poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others celebrated ordinary citizens, writing poetry that was accessible to the general public. These poets, and Romanticism literature generally, held that emotions were as important, if not more important, than logic and believed that people could expand their consciousness and their emotions through connecting with nature. Their poems, while expressing these more democratic beliefs, still adhered to a formal style at times. Wordsworth himself often wrote sonnets—a poem of 14 lines with a regular pattern of rhyme.
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 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