Walt Whitman Poetry

Whitman’s famous book of poetry that he revised many times over his lifetime is called

Define 'free verse'

• Poetry with no regular patterns of rhyme or meter

• Poetry with regular patterns of rhyme or meter

• Poetry written with a precise meter that does not rhyme.

• Poetry with three-line stanzas with a 5/7/5 syllable count

• Poetry that normally tells a story about a hero or an adventure

Whitman, in addition to free verse, used three other techniques frequently in his writing. Check three of them.

• Cataloging

• Poeticizing

• Repetition

• Parallelism

• Whitmanizing

The speaker celebrates the differences of Americans in “I Hear America Singing” by describing:

• types of workers

• cultural traditions

• positions in society

• work tools

In "I Hear America Singing' lines 2-8, Whitman lists several jobs. What poetic device is he using?

Describe the tone of “I Hear America Singing.”

• Despondent

• Celebratory

• Perplexed

• Dismissing

• Nervous

In “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” the speaker is similar to the spider because he or she:

• stands on the promontory

• wants to spin a web

• is looking for a connection

• is launching a filament

Whitman uses a metaphor in “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to compare what two things?

• Comparing a spider to a soul

• Comparing a spider's web to a net

• Comparing a spider's patience to a child's

• Comparing a spider's life to a human's

Describe the tone of “A Noiseless Patient Spider.”

• The tone is downtrodden and hopeless

• The tone is cheerful and optomistic

• The tone is wistful and melancholy

• The tone is thoughtful and introspective

One message of “Beat! Beat! Drums!” is the:

• importance of equality

• opportunity for heroic deeds

• value of finding truth

• need for sacrifice in wartime