Walt Whitman wrote this poem towards the end of the nineteenth century. How
might it be different if he were writing it today?
Answers
Answer:
Poetry was not only a tool for expressing political sadness for Whitman; it was also a political force in and of itself.
Explanation:
Poetry was not only a tool for expressing political sadness for Whitman; it was also a political force in and of itself. "Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall," Whitman claimed of the United States in the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), echoing Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous dictum in 1840's "A Defence of Poetry," "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Shelley was alluding to the function of art and culture in influencing people's desires and wills, which are finally mirrored in the law. Whitman, on the other hand, went even further in his prelude. "At any moment on the face of the globe, the Americans of all nations have possibly the fullest poetical nature," he says. "The United States of America is, in essence, the greatest poetry." Whitman's argument was based on the premise that both poetry and democracy gain their force from their ability to form a cohesive whole out of separate pieces, a concept that is particularly important at a time when America is deeply divided.
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