Why is Walt Whitman considered America's leading poet again? What about him appeals to the American psyche...

Why is Walt Whitman considered America's leading poet again? What about him appeals to the American psyche? And why not Eliot, Frost, or Stevens?

like, chronology

It would've been Eliot but he's a bitchboy anglophile traitor

Are you saying you don't like Whitman?

Eliot denounced his Americanness and became British.

Maybe frost was too colloquial.

I think wallace stevens was on par with walt, but maybe he was too much of a modernist to be the face of american poetry.

Whitman really paved the way for realism not just in america but across the world

Mebbe I do but someone has to convince lil' ol' me, desu renai circulation.

>why?

Pic related first page of his book

the every man

I remember we actually talked about this photo for a good 30 minutes in my American Literature survey.

Because he was homo.

What about pic related? Will he ever achieve the same fame?

NOOOOOOO

Eliot is too concerned with European/western culture in general to be distinctly American
Stevens is too intellectual (and America is not an intellectual nation)
Dunno about Frost, never read him

Whitman perfectly encapsulates the optimistic, idealistic, democratic and boundless American spirit. Manifest Destiny, the American Dream, "shining city on a hill", all that shit is in Whitman. He is as American as Dickens is English and Dostoevsky is Russian.

the best poets of America were Washington, Adams, Hancock, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine and Lincoln, son

this is the most pretentious thing i have ever heard.

Because he wrote the kind of tripe that fags can easily use as a yearbook quote.

My autism about regular meter has gradually turned me against Whitman.

Okay about 3-4 helpful posts, better than i was expecting tbhqhtyvm

underrated af

Only jews hate Eliot. You're not a jew, are you?

>tripe
>fags

Trying so hard to flex a vocabulary only to resort to "fag" halfway through your sentence.

No. Don't ever lost again.

Eliot and Stevens (as well as Hart Crane, Pound, and most of the modernists.) were too esoteric for the general public and too concerned with poetry in and of itself for most Americans, who were focused on the quotidian world outside the arts.

Frost was similarly accessible, but he lacked Whitman's epic reach and prophetic vision.

Whitman also preceded all of these poets and purposely marketed himself as a wandering, American Everyman, which he knew would appeal to the general public. His writing style also deliberately reflects the attributes and aspirations of America as a country, as both his poetry and the land are prosaic, rustic, and transcendental in scope.

"Fag" is a perfectly concise, descriptive word, you fag.

>Whitman also preceded all of these poets and purposely marketed himself as a wandering, American Everyman, which he knew would appeal to the general public. His writing style also deliberately reflects the attributes and aspirations of America as a country, as both his poetry and the land are prosaic, rustic, and transcendental in scope.

I really hate pandering desu. Is Whitman justified in doing so?

>justified

lmao wut
what would it mean to be "justified" in pandering

Well, he's considered the de facto national poet of the United States, so if he wasn't justified he was at the very least effective.

>tripe
>flexing vocab
Lmao

>never read Frost

but why tho

Americans are just dumb

Because there is more than enough poetry in the world to read, and as a non-American I'm not particularly interested in Frost.

America's "leading poet" is Dickinson, not Whitman.

Frost and Stevens are pretty Veeky Forums. Won't be time wasted if you feel like reading poetry.