Walt Whitman

about Whitman's life

• Whitman was influenced greatly by the writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson
• He was a part of the transcendentalism movement, a time of philosophy and idealism
• He strayed from the classic works and wrote about topics that others were afarid of
• Much like his different thoughts, he wrote his poems differently, becoming the "Father of FreeVerse"
• He spent his life writing "Leaves of Grass", a collection of poems

Life continued

• These poems revealed his exotic thoughts through sexuality
• Emerson praised it calling it an "extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom"
• This helped attract attention some but most people saw it as peromiscuous

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Whitman in the Civil War

• Whitman actively served as a nurse in makeshift hospitals in DC
• "help cheer and change a little the monotony of their sickness"
• known to scribble in makeshift notebooks at the hospitals
• Wrote "Drum Taps" which was a thorough psychological exam of the war
• After Lincoln's assassination, he wrote a collection of elegies as a sequel

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Figurative Language

• extened metaphor
• no fixed meter
• rhyme scheme aabb dcdc
• juxtaposition with opening couplet & following lines
• repetition with "captain" and "heart"