Walt Whitman

To this day, Walt Whitman is one of the most historical writers to walk the face of the earth.  He will always be remembered for what he contributed to the various writng styles.  Walt Whitman was a writer during the 1800's.  Walt Whitman was considered a tweener because he did not necesarily fall into one specific style of writing.  He was inbetween, hints the tween, the modernism style of writing and the realism style of writing.

The first type of writing is Modernism, which is about the modern growth in industry and many popular Modernism poems/stories were about the World War 1. Also a huge part of modernism was that the author will write a lot about individualism and the idea of equality.  In the poem, Song of Myself, it comes out a lot on the individualism about the story.  " I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass (Whitman).

Throughout this story, it refers the I and me, which takes on a huge characteristic of the modernism style of writing.  The celebration of ones self is very important to basically every one.  It has carried into the world that we live in today and plays a huge part in everybody's life, whether they want to admit it or not.  "One would expect, therefore, the democratization of the sublime in Leaves of Grass, certainly in Song of Myself, where the announced subject is, one first supposes, limited to the body, emotions, experiences, and apprehensions of a single man. Greater directness, and a greater radicalization of traditional poetic tone, can scarcely be imagined than that found in the blunt opening lines, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself." In many definitions of the sublime, "commonness"—even commonness transfigured—can have no part at all, but a reader of Whitman is soon accustomed to his practice of refocusing the visionary mode, wherein the small is made the courtyard of the vast and the squalid is the guise that the holy puts on to enter squalid environs" (Hopes).  This shows that Whitman was impressed with the mind as a sense of power.

The other style of writing that Walt Whitman found himself between was realism.  Realism is the portraying of how something actually is.  It is not the ideal society but the real society, to give you an idea of what I am talking about.  An example of this is Calvary crossing a Ford.  Whitman talked about how what the men did when they were not fighting in the war (when they were doing nothing).
"Behold the brown-faced, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles." (Whitman).  This is realism writing because it is portraying these men as they actually are, or what they are doing.  Obviously they are tan from being outside and they are sitting down.  This style of writing takes a simple approach becaue there are no tricks behind it, it is just how it really is.

Hopes, David Brendan. "The Sublime Self: Whitman's Sense of the Sublime in Song of Myself." Asheville: University of North Carolina. Quoted as "The Sublime Self: Whitman's Sense of the Sublime in Song of Myself" in Bloom, Harold, ed. The Sublime, Bloom's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BLTS018&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 20, 2012).
Whitman, Walt. "Calvary Crossing a Ford." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.

Whitman, Walt. "from song of Myself." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.