This is just bad

This is just bad
What am I missing here?

a sense of history and poetics probably

A brain

Abysmal taste desu

No I've actually read every major English poet from Chaucer up starting last year, and knew Whitman was supposed to be a kind of singularity of style, and I can see that, and that he draws on American transcendentalism. It just isn't very good, I feel you could easily translate it without losing much. I'd appreciate specific points

I'd appreciate specific points instead if vague insults*
I know I have better taste than most of you so it doesn't lead anywhere

You're asking for specifics but don't elaborate yourself on what you mean by "not very good." What are YOU talking about? For good or ill, Whitman is the origin of modern poetry. He was an uneducated man with no training in style or meter. He published the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and was met with the same criticism you're giving him. But if you read Song of Myself especially the part about the white trapper marrying the Indian maiden and compare it to Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha it is EASY to see why Whitman's stock today is higher than Longfellow's. From Houseman to Kerouac, Corso and Ginsburg Whitman is the main influence. Also to Henry Miller and Steinbeck. Why can't you see this?

He was also influential on pretty much every great American poet in the 20th century: Eliot, Crane, Stevens etc

> For good or ill, Whitman is the origin of modern poetry. He was an uneducated man with no training in style or meter. He published the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and was met with the same criticism you're giving him.
>Why can't you see this?
Oh I can see that, I know his influence, I just don't think it's a good one. He really is the American poet in that sense. I'm sure there are plenty of scholars who would btfo that opinion but I'm stuck in the resentful Classicist and Romanticism phase

>Eliot, Crane, Stevens
I feel like they made something of it though, they created great work with aesthetic appeal, structure and depth. Guess it worked out