Why was Walt Whitman so wordy?

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Was there a hidden meaning behind Walt Whitman's constant wordiness and blowhardiness?

-- Anonymous, March 03, 2000

Answers

I think that Walt Whitman chose to be wordy to try and let the reader experience his feelings as best he could. He felt that he could do this by useing a lot of details to accomplish this. Thats why I think he used so many wor

-- Anonymous, March 08, 2000

First of all, I'm not sure I'd call it blowhardiness, as to me that implies a certain amount of negativity. I think that Whitman, especially in his earlier poems, is simply trying to show the universality of his positions. Notice that by the time he wrote his later poems about more specific subjects like the Death of Abraham Lincoln or the effects of war on soldiers, he wasn't nearly as wordy. However, in his earlier poems, Whitman is dealing with larger, more universal subjects like truth and beauty and wants to include everything. He almost seems afraid that he might forget an example, so he just includes them all.

-- Anonymous, March 22, 2000

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