What was Walt Whitman's impact on Literature?
The poetry and philosophy of Walt Whitman is a perfect example
of the transition from the use of old literary conventions borrowed
from Europe to an emerging, uniquely American style of writing.
Whitman is a great bridge figure of 19th century American
literature. He was a romantic, yet he paved the way for later
modernists in his experiments with form and subject.
His poetic style was unique in its simplicity, avoiding the use
of rhyme and meter, instead using parallelism, repetition, and the
use of the phrase instead of the poetic foot as a unit of measure.
This style would come to be known as free verse.