Whitman's Different Lengths of Poems

Whitman’s Different Lengths of Poems

            Walt Whitman wrote a variety of poems dealing with different lengths, approaches, and techniques. Whitman is a stronger poet when writing longer poems than his shorter ones. His poems “Song of Myself” and “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” have more of an impact on me as a reader than his shorter ones such as “Cavalry Crossing a Ford” and “Reconciliation.” He almost seems to be two different poets.

            In Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself,” in just the first stanza of the poem the reader can feel his seemingly set-in-stone attitude and strength:

                        I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

                        And what I assume you shall assume,

                        For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. (lines 1-3)

Whitman develops a sense of power in these lines. He claims that he is his own muse, that he writes from his own inspiration. He also claims that his assumptions will be the same for the reader. This reveals his feeling of superiority. In the last line of this stanza, “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” he shows that his word represents all. This Whitman writes for all and every person of any variety in ethnicity, religion, or gender. There is definitely a sense of pride, determination, and superiority in this Whitman.

            In his poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Whitman also develops this same sense of superiority. In this lengthy poem, he creates his own myth of how he came to be a poet:

                        And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,

                        Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. (30-31)

Whitman wrote that he had the ability to translate bird song. He could listen to the birds singing, and use their songs to write poetry. But this would make the birds his muse, unlike when he claimed to be his own muse in the poem “Song of Myself”: “A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die” (149). This shows that the bird’s songs translation depends on the translator, showing that the translations are Whitman’s own thoughts.

            In the poem “Cavalry Crossing a Ford,” one of his shorter poems, Whitman comes across as a completely different, and weaker, poet. He no longer shows his supremacy or strength, but merely writes of a quick snapshot scene of a cavalry presumably in the Civil War. His writing is weaker here because his quick poem doesn’t stand for everyone of even himself, and has no impacting emotion within the lines making it hard to leave its mark in the memory of the reader.

            In Whitman’s poem “Reconciliation,” there is a drastic change in his writing as a poet. Unlike his earlier poems, he no longer writes for all. His pride and superiority mark into a narcissistic ideal of himself. Only he and his views mattered, and those who opposed were wrong: “That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world” (3). This Whitman had enemies, and he wished to cleanse the soiled world of those enemies in his sense of purification.

            Whitman’s lengthier poems crush his short ones under their weight of strength. Whitman seems to be two separate poets when he writes these two different ways. And his longer poems have more of an impact on the reader than his shorter ones.