Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" Walt Whitman was born to a working class family in New York in 1819. Known as one of America's greatest and most innovative poets, Whitman was also among the first generation to grow up in a completely independent United States, and there is no doubt that this had an effect on both the subject and the style of his poetry.

His early poems are generally considered derivative and artificial, but as he began to read more his notes make it clear that he stopped trying to write they way other poets did, and instead began to develop a style of his own that was specifically counter to the literary and critical thinking of his day, establishing an independent identity of his own much like the country he war born in was struggling to do.

In "Song of Myself," Whitman seems to be expounding a philosophy of this independence and freedom as much as he is using the poem to express his overflow of feelings. The complete lack of rhyme and meter is offset by the poem's revolution about the same central point; throughout the poem, Whitman observes nature and society with the same eye, seeing the freedom in this country as being comparable to the freedom of nature.

His constant use of the firs person "I" also shows the strong independent streak in Whitman's character and poetry. "Song of Myself" makes it very clear that this independence is not born of ego, nor does it desire or require isolation. Rather, the independence and freedom of the repeated "I" is of a part with the nature and society that the speaker observes, which ironically seems to call the individuality of the "I" into question even as it is being celebrated by the speaker.

Critics have wondered whether or not Whitman went through a transformative experience that affected his style, making it as unique but not until his middle age, but no agreement has been.