The Fresh Air Interview: Poet Robert Hass, On Whitman's 'Song Of Myself' Walt Whitman. Whitman's verse is crowded with allusions to song and the singer.
The singer is poet, prophet, bard, mystic celebrator of the self--of the poet in everyman, in the worker, in the individual, in America en masse. Whitman's references to music are all-pervading and eclectic; in his various poetic songs he chants hymns to a range of people and experiences from the plantation chorus of Negroes to the strong baritone of the big longshoremen of Mannahatta. While he, ironically, disliked the piano--calling it a parlour instrument--he loved the wide range of orchestral instruments & used them as images to people his poems: drums became the march of nations; birdsong the freedom of flight; bugles were calls to valor or funeral taps; trumpets suggested celebrations of joy and fanfares for ethereal bliss; the cello recalled a young man's heart complaint.
Whitman's poems are, in fact, orchestrated with as full a range of color as any musical score--with voices which rise and fall in dialogue. Student Materials: Acrostic Poems. Browse Notebooks. Poetry Foundation: Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.