The Portable Walt Whitman (English)

Whitman's poetry, with its energetic style, looseness of form, and breadth of subject matter, revolutionized American writing. His declared intention was to create poetry that was distinctively American, "to give something to our literature that will be our own..."--a democratic vision that encompassed and celebrated all races and classes. Whitman's technique often involved making lists of the wonders and varieties of the human experience: contraltos, carpenters, duck-shooters, lunatics, machinists, immigrants, reformers, squaws, deckhands, millgirls, opium eaters, the President, fishermen, patriarchs, old folks--all these categories of people, plus hundreds more, appear in his work. He referred to himself in a poem as "Walt Whitman, an American.../Disorderly, fleshly and sensual," and he prophesied his own popularity when he wrote, "Missing me in one place search another,/I stop somewhere waiting for you." minimize