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analyses: There are generally no rhythm to a free verse poem although it may have repetition, alliteration, personification, and metaphors. The poem compares a spider to the human reader. The spider constantly shoot out web to make bonds with objects around them, humans constantly shoot out their soul to make connection, to fill voids..
Poem: A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself. Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. ((And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them. ((Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.)) ))
Walt Whitman born May 31 1819 in Long Island N.Y. was the son of a Carpenter and a Dutch farmer woman. Whitman took up an early interest in nature and grew up being influenced by the writers Goethe, Hegel, Carlyle and Emerson. He was the second of nine children and carried his fathers name. Whitman Jr.’s family had a poor economical standing which is believed to be why they moved various times; one of his earlier moves was at the age of four when Whitman and his family moved to Brooklyn. When Whitman was eleven he finished formal schooling and sought out a job to assist the families income. Whitman Sr. moved him self and his family back to West Hills, while Whitman Jr. stayed and took up his second job at a newspaper while he had this job he began to publish some of his earliest work anonymously to the New York Mirror. At 16 Whitman moved to New York where he worked as a compositor. In 1836 he rejoined his family in Hempstead, Long Island. Whitman then tried multiple teaching jobs only to move back to New York and start his own newspaper called the Long Islander, which was then bought by E. O. Crowell. Between 1840 and 1841 Whitman landed himself a job of a teacher which is when he published “Sun-Down Papers- From the Desk of a Schoolmaster.” In these essays he used technique that would be sown in his poems later on.
Whitman was said to have grown weary of competing for the all to common reward, so he decided to become a poet (Why he became a poet). Whitman started to write around 1850 when he began his work on Leaves of Grass, he continued to work on this until his death on March 26, 1892. His book was sold in great numbers credited mostly to Ralph Wando Emerson’s praise. With the beginning of the Civil War Whitman published patriotic poems even more-so rallying up the North. Thinking that his brother George might be dead he went out to New York. Seeing his brother alive relived him but all the bodies and amputated limbs caused for his departure in December 28, 1862. Then gaining the experience of a nurse in the army hospitals he wrote The Great Army of the Sick and his book called Memoranda During the War. 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman was published and was a hit in England. 1873 Whitman suffered the loss of his mother and a stroke. Shortly after he moved in with his brother in Camden, New Jersey before taking residence in a house some time in 1884. In his home a widow be the name of Mary Oakes Davis became his housekeeper in exchange for free rent; in her company she brought a cat, dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and other unspecified animals. 1876, 1881, 1889 and 1891 were the last editions of Leaves of Grass made. His final publishing in 1891 has been nicknamed the Deathbed edition, the final one which he announce as his complete work. After his death it was revealed the Whitman's demise was a result of bronchial pneumonia and a large abscess that dissolved some of his ribs.
Style and impact on poetry: His work breaks rules of poetry, uses many images, and is mostly on the topics of death, sexuality, religion, and the Civil War. His Work brought free verse to light and for this he is often referred to as the father of free verse.
Walt Whitman
