His noble ideas directly opposed everything about modern American poetry and poets, and sparked curiosity in the way authors were writing during the nineteenth century. He started a trend in writing by using free verse similar to thought-rhythm, or parallelism, as shown in his poem, I Hear America Singing.
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing (Whitman 11-14)
The writing style during the nineteenth century was rhyme and descended from a line of European traditions dictating style, content and form, which free verse did not have. People ridiculed and harshly judged Whitman’s writing, but eventually his poems became so popular that he became the “Father of Free Verse.”…show more content… Doing this, he learned what justice needed to be served in America during the nineteenth century. It allowed him to show his community his true political beliefs. For example, Whitman believed in having slaves, something most Americans believed was wrong. In his poem, Democratic Vistas, he talks not about being able to have religion involved in our government, but rather democracy and government as a religion. “Whoever degrades another degrades me” (Whitman 133).
Walt Whitman attended debates, the theatre, concerts, lectures and political meetings. He did this to experience other people’s views on the American life to influence his writings. He loved mixing into new crowds, meeting new people, and going out of his comfort zone to partake in other’s normal lives and activities. This helped him to be able to compare what the common, wealthy, poor, government, and he himself collectively believed in. Doing this gave him inspiration, and the other views allowed him to expand his work far past what he had already written and