Previous Next

Whitman wrote “Song of Myself” in a loose style that we might call free verse. Although this term didn’t enter English-language poetic discourse until the twentieth century, it aptly describes the way Whitman has liberated his verse from the constraint of strict meter. The lines in the poem range widely in length. The shortest lines are just three words long, whereas the longest lines clock in at over thirty—so long, in fact, that they extend across multiple rows of typed text. As for the rhythm, Whitman doesn’t sustain any repeating metrical pattern, opting instead for shifting cadences that follow the speaker’s mercurial whims and changing subject matter. The result is a rhythmic complexity that sometimes sounds closer to prose than poetry. As an example, consider the following passage from section 3 (lines 59–65):

     I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
     As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
     Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
     Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
     That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
     And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
     Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

These seven lines encompass a single sprawling sentence that could just as well be reformulated in prose. That said, even without the line breaks to give the text the appearance of poetry, Whitman’s language features one rhetorical tactic that gives these verses a “poetic” rhythm. That is, he uses the repetition of “and” instead of commas to invest his language with a powerful rhythmic flow.

As this last point suggests, Whitman often brings a poetic quality to the rhythm of his lines through the use of repetition. Closely connected to his use of repetition is his construction of series of clauses with parallel grammatical structures. Most often, Whitman combines these techniques in extended passages that have strong rhetorical effects. As just one example of many, consider this passage from section 42 (lines 1063–69):

     Ever the hard unsunk ground,
     Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,
     Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
     Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,
     Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth,
     Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
     Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

Whitman’s use of repetition and parallel grammatical structures yields a passage that, though lacking a strict meter, nonetheless has a propulsive drive and exhibits a relish for language. Elsewhere in the poem, Whitman’s repetition has an even more incantatory effect. In section 18, for instance, the speaker intones a celebratory chant for the earth (lines 438–443):

     Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
     Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
     Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt!
     Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
     Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
     Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!

As this example suggests, the rhythmic effects of Whitman’s poetry often depend on his deployment of a technique known as anaphora (ann-AF-uh-ruh). This technique involves repeating sequential clauses with the same word or phrase. By starting each line the same way, he allows us to register the varying length of each line. In this way, the individual line becomes its own rhythmic unit.

Previous section Structure Next section Rhyme

Take a Study Break