Figures of Speech: Figures of speech are when the word or phrase is used in a non-literal fashion to create a rhetorical effect. Walt Whitman established his reputation as a poet in the late 1850s to early 1860s with the 1855 release of Leaves of Grass. "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman - Vocabulary List 16Youve fallen cold and dead. Commenting on his poetry, he said that the audience of his time appreciated poetry with form, rhyme, and meter, still unfamiliar to the free-verse concept. "Exult O shores" While the second quatrain does not follow a specific metrical scheme. By beginning the poem in this manner, it becomes an ode or a tribute to one who has fallen. The poem is a lament following the assassination of the President Abraham Lincoln, with the "Captain" himself standing for Lincoln. Compare And Contrast Annabel Lee And O Captain My Captain Literary Nonsense Concept & Examples | What are Nonsensical Writings? This shows personification because loneliness is an emotion, and an inanimate object cannot feel emotions. "O Captain! In 2000, Helen Vendler wrote that because Whitman "was bent on registering individual response as well as the collective wish expressed in 'Hush'd be the camps', he took on the voice of a single representative sailor silencing his own idiosyncratic voice". O Captain! It is often referred to as the Scottish version of modernism. I know what a keel What is the effect of long sets of repetitions in Walt Whitman's poems? My Captain! at the time of its publication became an intensely popular poem for classic, read in schools over the years to come. my Captain! The poem is perhaps Whitmans most famouswhich is ironic, since it is far more conventional in meter, form, and subject than much of Whitmans other work. 20From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 21 Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 18My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. With the help of literary devices, the authors equip their simple texts with powerful impacts on their readers. heart! "O captain! Again, the poet uses synecdoche to represent the entire American audience at large as the poem relates to the death of Abraham Lincoln. As Keating returns to collect his belongings, the students stand on their desks and address Keating as "O Captain! Besides, this poem is an elegy. My Captain!" The Speaking in the language of ordinary men, Walt Whitman aspired to become the voice of the nation, speaking on the behest of the American population at the time. The captain must be responsible for all on-field decisions. The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won. My Captain! makes use of father and heart to mourn the death of assassinated Abraham Lincoln. My Captain!' My Captain! [56] In 1892, The Atlantic wrote that "My Captain" was universally accepted as Whitman's "one great contribution to the world's literature",[45] and George Rice Carpenter, a scholar and biographer of Whitman, said in 1903 that the poem was possibly the best work of Civil War poetry, praising its imagery as "beautiful". For audio recordings of the poem, check out the free downloadable selection from LibriVox. Each stanza has two quatrains of four seven-beat lines, followed by a four-line refrain, which changes slightly from stanza to stanza, in a tetrameter/trimeter ballad beat.