Whitman Poetry

Ralph Waldo Emerson states in The Poet, “I know not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature.” Emerson believed the world needed poets to help others express themselves. Emerson wrote The Poet to express what qualities he felt were needed in a true American poet. Emerson read Walt Whitman’s poetry and was pleasantly amazed at what he found. Whitman’s poem To the Sunset Breeze fulfills the qualities and ideas Emerson thought necessary of a great American poet.

One of Emerson’s beliefs is that poets should be in touch with nature. He says, “Nature offers all her creatures to him (the poet) as a picture-language.” Emerson expresses repeatedly that the poet’s job is to describe the beauty of the world and nature. In To the Sunset Breeze, Whitman writes, “I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes, I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space…” Everything in Whitman’s eyes becomes beautiful and magical. Through his poetry Whitman becomes one with nature. Emerson idolized this quality in Whitman’s works.

According to Emerson, poems create their own structure. “For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,–a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has architecture of its own.” Many poets of the time followed a rhyme scheme of some sort. Whitman however, didn’t focus on if the lines rhymed, instead let the passion and beauty of the poem create a structure, “Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gentle vitalizing…” which thrilled Emerson. In To the Sunset Breeze not a single line rhymed and nearly every line was of different length.

“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men,” claimed Emerson. He believed using metaphors and symbols gave the poem more power and meaning. Whitman writes, “So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on my face and hands…” Whitman uses his imagination, and thinks outside the box to make the reader think and interpret, instead of just reading words. At first the line sounds like someone is actually in touching Whitman’s face and hands with their fingers, but if read carefully and thought about in the context of the poem, it becomes clear that Whitman is describing the wind, and that it feels like a soothing hand. To The Sunset Breeze as a whole poem is a metaphor. The lines sound like descriptions of a person speaking to Whitman, or touching him, but what he is really doing is making the wind come alive. Whitman shows how the wind can be comforting and soothing, just like a friend. These kinds of symbols would have excited Emerson.

Whitman’s poem To the Sunset Breeze fits the overall “spirit” which Emerson longed for. The poem is in touch with nature and describes the beauty of all things. It does not follow a rhyme scheme, but lets the poem make the structure. Whitman’s descriptions and symbols consist of imagery unlike any other. Emerson saw the talent Whitman had to offer, and To the Sunset Breeze is just one example of how Whitman fit the image Emerson painted of a great poet perfectly.