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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Whitman’s vision in the poem rests on embracing the (im)perfect in all things. However, a baffling yet persistent dilemma confronts the speaker as he stares at the vacant faces on the ferry: No one else seems willing or able to connect with the speaker by embracing this spiritual vision.
Whitman, given his faith in the democratic gospel of union, embraced poetry as an intimacy with the reader that defied time and space. Here, he uses sweeping lines of stately and uncomplicated emphasis (often set in the invitatory imperative) to reach out to the reader to upend their quiet complacency, to get them swept up even for a moment in the clarion energy of language itself: “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence” (Line 21)—so says Whitman in this grand celebration of hundreds of commuters packed on the ferry crossing from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The speaker finds himself surrounded by city workers who grind out their lives in soul-crushing routine. They therefore appear dulled to the prospect of spiritual revival.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman