I Failed

Walt Whitman, I researched, is American, and “the father of free verse”. His style is unique, bla, bla, bla. I read indeed the poems from his book Leaves of Grass (by the way, grass doesn’t have leaves). I wanted to get the style all by myself, without the help from Mr. Tangen. Usually I miss all the stylistic things and the real meaning behind the word choice, or sentence structure, I don’t catch the greatness of the author, writer, poet, artists, painter, etc. I just miss it, no matter how hard I read it, or how focused I am. But the times I do get it, it feels good. In Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert, I was getting the hang of it, I had started to feel Flaubert and his sentences and description, and just when I feel I pro, I have to read somebody else. But that’s good. I have to practice comparing styles (I guess). So I compared Whitman with Flaubert.

Whitman writes in first person, he is describing what he sees, what he feels, “Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.” (line 98). Flaubert writes in third person, and he describes the third person’s feeling, actions, emotions, “She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person, for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?”

Flaubert seldom repeats a word, he is even famous because of that. Whitman, on the other hand, uses repetition as a style, he starts a series of lines in his verses with the same first, second and third word, for example,
“It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps;” (lines 104-107)

I also noted that he compares everything with nature, plants specially. He is also very, not the pejorative self centered, but the selfcenterness that is good. I accept it, I feel I failed to get Whitman, I need the class discussions.