A Different Approach: Words

The fist thing that struck me when I stared reading the poems was repetition: “I loafe and invite my Soul;

I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass” (Poem 1). I do not know if repetition is a type of style, but if it is, Whitman loves it. I personally like repetition, to a certain point. It can be funny and will get the message across. When it turns bad, is when it starts becoming a tongue twister. Whitman has not gone to this extent but he is close. Even though his poems mention a range of different things his style stays the same.

In the third poem I encountered the mild tongue twister: “I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end;

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end” (Poem 3). What this does is it creates a different image of the poem and changes the way I read it. I do not approach it as I would a novel. By doing this it is suddenly unique. We mentioned Clichés in class today, and what Whitman did can be an example of the opposite. Even though I do not know that much about poetry, his poems captivated me only be the wording.