and theater, and began to read and write tremendously, out of which he developed his own style of free-verse poetry. In 1855, Walt Whitman embarked upon his career as a poet when he published his incipient edition of “Leaves of Grass (Callow 78) .”Whitman was not able to find a publisher who would take on the project, so he was forced to publish the work at his own expense. Whitman’s first book received mixed reviews due to the subject matter of the material. Many critics claimed that “Leaves of Grass” was immoral and trashy, because of the many sexual innuendoes and references to prostitutes and people of low stature (Whitman xvi) . It is also important to note that the poetry of Walt Whitman was unlike any of his contemporaries. First of all, Whitman’s poetry almost never contained a rhyme scheme and secondly, he used language of the “common man.” In the last few verses of “Song of Myself”, for example, he glorifies the differences between himself and others by writing, “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Compare this with a more rhymed and classical sounding piece by Whitman’s contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodious”: “Ye deliverers of Athens from shame! Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs! Endless ages shall cherish your fame embalmed in their echoing songs (Poe 50) !” One would never find Walt Whitman writing about Greek gods, or using the words “ye”, “ev’n”, or any other antiquated word. This is just another way in which Walt Whitman declared his independence and encouraged others to declare their independence by reading his writing, even though they were considered unbecoming. However, a praise that inspired Whitman a great deal 3.came from Ralph Waldo Emerson, in which he describ...
