Walt Whitman Writing Style

The writing style of Walt Whitman is one that cannot be considered Realism nor can it be considered Modernism because his writing as a whole has a combination of both. The Realism period is considered looking at things as they are and not how they "could be". An example of this type of writing from Walt Whitman is "Calvary Crossing a Ford". This is a poem talking about how army men were in the time of war during the day when they were not fighting. The poem is poetic but is realism literacy because it still is very blunt and full of literal meaning. For example, "Behold the brown-faced, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles." (Whitman 1) shows that he is a realistic writer. This a realism literacy because it is a literal meaning and doesn't have a philosophical or symbolic purpose. It is saying that the men are brown faced and the negligent men sit upon their saddles. This is a very simple way of writing in because it doesn't mean that you as a person have to use much thought when reading it. The author though has to use a lot of thought so that they are able to keep the literal meaning while still making the story/poem interesting to the writer. The other type of writing is Modernism, which is about the modern growth in industry and many popular Modernism poems/stories were about the World War 1. Also a huge part of modernism was that the author will write a lot about individualism and the idea of equality. This was the path the Walt Whitman took over the industrial realism part. The story called "from Song of Myself" bleeds the ideas of individualism. The quote "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you" (Whitman 2) represents the idea of individualism and of being oneself. The idea of celebrating oneself is something that has been carried into today's world a lot and I believe it came from this era of literacy. The literary critic Matt Longabucco has a huge article on Whitman's career in literature. He says, "Much has been made of this design choice of Whitman's, since it seems to announce two important thematic premises of the book: first, that the poet is not separable from his physical body (and therefore his portrait is as valid an identification as his name), and second, that the poet is "one of the roughs," as he puts it, "no stander above men and women or apart from them" (and therefore dressed like the mass of working men and women)." (Longabucca), which is explaining the author, set up his poetry writing style. Longabucca realized that Whitman did have a general set-up to his writings which I have also noticed when reading his poetry. The idea that he is a "tweener" shows that he can neither be considered a modernist or a realist writer.

Whitman, Walt. "Calvary Crossing a Ford." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.

Whitman, Walt. "from song of Myself." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.



Longabucco, Matt. "'The Proof of a Poet'—Walt Whitman and His Critics." 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= BCWWh03&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 19, 2012).