Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is a free spirit.  His poetry expresses his deist nature of embracing all religions and all people simultaneously.  I prefer his writing style, free verse, to most other poets we have read, mostly because I feel it best expresses his thoughts and the flow of his writing.  It still houses a rhythm and in several poems, you can sense the internal rhyme.  Though we were instructed to read many of his poems, I choose to focus on three of my favorites in this response to his poetry. 

From Pent-up Aching Rivers is a poem essentially about lust and pent up emotions anticipating sex.  Whitman is very sexual in nature.  Though he speaks of women in his poetry, there is more passion in his description of men.  Especially in lines, 21 through 25 you can get a real sense that the male figure is more attractive to him then the figure of a woman.  He does seem to try to fake real emotion for women, but in the end, it is not true passion, but just an act of human need.

In A Woman Waits For Me you can tell that he certainly had an internal conflict of those who loved and waited for him.  He admits in the poem that love to him can be found and expressed in many other ways than through sex.  He dwells in listing items and actions that bring him as much joy as sexual encounters.  He offers a warning to the one who waits for him that he is not normal or “robust husband.”  He essentially puts himself out there exposing his faults and the difficulty it is to love a like him.

My favorite poem of the series we read is Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand.  This poem is for his readers, or essentially for those who question his worth.  It seemed to me that this poem was exposing himself in a real way, laying everything out on the table and saying “Take me or leave me, but I change for no one.”  To me he warns his audience of who he is, but at the same time wants to entice the reader to keep reading him.  As a romantic writer he is encouraging them to abandon whatever the society tells them to read and read and decied for themselves.