Walt Whitman's Writing Style Reflection

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in Long Island, New York. He is considered to be one of the most important transcendentalist writers of his time. Like we have talked about before, Walt Whitman took a great deal from both Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Henry Thoreau. The poems that I have read of his seem very nice. I am not a great poet or anything like that, but from my perspective I thought that his writing style was very wise sometimes. Sometimes he tends to take a more political turn in his writings, but when he talks about nature especially it reminds me of Emerson and Thoreau and after all of the research we have done on them, I have come to like their styles, at least to a certain extent. This was also a from of Romanticism writing, but like I said, he often wrote about other things as well. "Keep your splendid, silent sun; Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards;Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum;" (Whitman). Even if I do not agree or really understand with whatever Whitman is saying, I still think his poems are very insightful and well written. Whitman created a whole new style of writing. It was new for this time period and became very popular(Connors). The subject matter was also a lot bolder (Connors). Like Emerson and Thoreau, I think he ended up leaving behind his own legacy.
However, believe it or not, there were some people that did not like Walt Whitman's writing style at all. For example, Henry James an American author, did not like Walt Whitman at all, at least not the way he wrote things. In fact, he ends up calling Whitman's Drum Taps as "an offense against art" (James). He rejected Whitman's style and eclecticism as mere novelty rather than artistic innovation. "Our author's novelty, however, is not in his words, but in the form of his writing. As we have said, it begins for all the world like verse and turns out to be arrant prose." I think here Mr. James is saying that the reason he never cared for Whitman much was because nothing was special about his words. The only thing that was different about him was his writing style. But because everyone liked his style, they would often agree with his views or admire him. I am not sure if I agree with Henry James, but I can kind of see where he is coming from. All I know is that Walt Whitman must have had an affect on people. There are many people that enjoyed his new and different writing style and are still, to this day, trying to reach that same level of creativity as he had done, but then there were others, like Henry James who criticized it and did not enjoy it at all. I personally enjoy his style of writing for the most part.







Connors, Judith. "Whitman, Walt." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCWWh02&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 20, 2012).


James, Henry. "Mr. Walt Whitman." The Nation, November 16, 1865: 626. Quoted as "Mr. Walt Whitman" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCVWaW079&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 20, 2012).


"130. Give Me the Splendid, Silent Sun. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. .