Whitman Wednesday

Walt Whitman was a man of craft: he attempted to live the way he wrote. As I read through Whitman's "Song of Myself", I noticed his lack of use of meter or rhyme scheme, but found traditional poetry elements in his works still. In part 5 of his work, I found many of these examples of form and technique at work.
Perhaps the most common scheme found in these strophes is parallelism. Whitman begins many sentences with the same beginning to add emphasis and build up drama. The first instance of this is, "Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best." By repeating the word "not", Whitman is able to create a flow from one idea to another while adding emphasis to the fact that none is satisfactory. Another example of parallelism is the line, "And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet." I found it interesting that the subject must reach both high (the beard) and low (feet), and the use of the same beginning for both clauses highlights this juxtaposition. Finally, Whitman proceeds to begin the final seven lines of the strophe with the word "And". This technique creates suspense for the end, as well as shows the complexity of the wisdom that the narrator is finding.
Another literary device Whitman uses is personification. The narrator is addressing his soul throughout this piece, and yet he gives it human qualities. For example, he writes, "Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat" and "How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, / And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, / And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet." By giving the soul these characteristics, Whitman gives the reader more insight into the relationship between the narrator and his soul.
There is a chiasmus in the first strophe, as Whitman writes, "The other I am must not abase itself to you, / And you must not be abased to the other." There are also short bits of alliteration in this work, such as the phrases, "lull I like," "valved voice," and "limitless are leaves". Overall, Whitman uses multiple literary devices in this work.