The+Critics

Walt Whitman’s contemporary critics offer non-poetic insights into the occurrences of the 19th century, and describe the reception of his works during a time of political upheavals and the search for one’s true identity. In the critical entry entitled “Independent” and written on **7** December 1865, “its author offers traditional opinions and comments in regards to poetry, and does not display great acceptance of Whitman’s idealistic form of writing with mentions of the goodness of the natural world amidst the uprisings of American society. His account is evidence of the difference in perspectives among citizens of the same country and political union. The author relates Whitman’s poetry in his various series to the **“**poetry of the clouds-formless, voiceless as they are” (“Independent”), an attack on his style which does not conform to the ever-so-popular rhyme schemes, typical line and stanza breaks, and rhythm. His description of Whitman’s work as voiceless is not only insulting to the format of his writing, but also to the subject matter of the man’s literature. Speaking of the need for man to break free from the established doctrines of society throughout a majority of his poems, Whitman offers an alternative view of the world: a place of natural beauty and botanical, mountainous, and liquid elegance. However, this is not the perception all of Whitman’s contemporaries had of this time period. Being the era of the Civil War, the American Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, the American lifestyle was one filled with financial, political, and emotional struggles. In his wishful and perceived outlandish ideas, Whitman causes his poems to be viewed as “destitute…of any intelligible utterance” (“Independent”) due to their lack of “rhyme or reason” (“Independent”). Not only does this critic offer disagreement with the author’s bold thinking, but scorns his writing for it does not follow traditional poetic style. While many Americans strove to find their individuality and their true place in society, others remained tied to past beliefs and to the established doctrines of the once-unified American society, as this critic does. Instead of respecting the free-thinking Transcendental views of Walt Whitman as an aspect of the Revolution, this man, along with many others, remained bound to his traditional knowledge of formulaic poetry. As Walt Whitman progressed as a non-conforming poet preaching of the quest for one’s self through the beauty of the natural world, its reception by differing critics displayed a new America: a joined union of torn views.