Free verse is poetry without regular patterns of rhyme, rhythm or meter. Then the witãthe rich flashes of humor and genius and poetryãdarting out often from a gang of laborers, railroad-men, miners, drivers or boatmen! Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. Slang In America by Walt Whitman Authors Background Born on May 31, 1819 Born in Long Island , New York He was a humanist he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafers Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few of the names of places in Butte county, Cal. Considering Language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shaksperes clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies.
Slang, nonetheless, was earthy, basic, and real—therefore the true vehicle for poetic expression. Pushing language to its fullest capacity, he would incorporate any word he found necessary without regard to social conventions. Barefoot whiskey is the Tennessee name for the undiluted stimulant. Just like a living organism, to counteract its short-lived nature and survive, slang must constantly regenerate as a body of speech and subset of the language. Because of these changes and for the reasons suggested by Whitman, slang — with its breath of life — has permeated everyday speech.
In 1976, he was admitted to practice law in California after studying under the supervision of an attorney for four years. And what reader had not been exercised over the traces of that feudal custom, by which seigneurs warmed their feet in the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being opened for the purpose? Answer of 2d conductor, Naild. By a semantic process akin to natural selection, only the strong terms or phrases survive, spreading from the regional, cultural, age or ethnic group in which they are coined. It impermeates all, the Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. One of his major points is that the creative element in language, its ability to adapt and develop, is as alive today with just as much fervor and intensity as it was at any point in the past. In short, war creates chaos and upsets the natural order of things.
Come on, come on, West Philly, come on South Jersey, come on, yon teenagers everywhere. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. Whitman could have written in any form he chose. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here and there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and indispensable, and lives forever. Walt Whitman, America's poet and master of a dynamic slang-filled American English, speaks for America and all of humankind. When slang is used, there is a subtext to the primary message.
It impermeates all, the Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. He took notes on slang sayings and provincialisms, and interviewed workmen, recording his findings in private journals so that he could later incorporate them into his poetry. As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession -- the language they talk and write -- from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile, even of those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certain that the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling from their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the stores of human utterance. Language, be it rememberd, is not an abstract construction of the learnd, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. Among the crowd were four NewYork cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers, one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas.
Most agree that his poetical language became more conventional in later years. Much like an orderly army is more capable of inflicting disorder and destruction, so is a carefully crafted rhythm essential to the effectiveness of free verse. Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, The Fairplay Colorado Flume, The Solid Muldoon, of Ouray, The Tombstone Epitaph, of Nevada, The Jimplecute, of Texas, and The Bazoo, of Missouri. What is a boom? As Whitman asserts later in the preface to Leaves of Grass: The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors … but always most in the common people. Reflecting the original working title, the essay has as much about names as about slang. Slang in our world today is completely different from the old times and how they would use it in their vocabulary.
A century and a half ago, shocked at the assassination of the sitting president who oversaw the reunification of a divided nation, Walt Whitman turned to poetry. Spirit meant breath, or flame. Whitman is one of the most influential poets in the english language. In this instance, Whitman imitates the orderly beat of a drum and the rhythmic cadence of an army on the march. Slang, profoundly considerd, is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. Later investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean horns of beasts slain in the hunt.
They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? American slang is also known for its fertility; it reproduces itself in abundance with each new generation. There is a reason Whitman is considered the father of free verse. Nature abhors a vacuum, and this is true with linguistic urges. To insult was to leap against. In ¨A Hand-Mirror,¨ Walt Whitman describes a person that looks okay from the outside, but it is revealed that the inside of this person is extremely unhealthy. This is when words become vitalized, and stand for things, as they unerringly and very soon come to do, in the mind that enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation.
As the United States inherit by far their most precious possessionthe language they talk and writefrom the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Slang pervades American speech to a startling degree. It involves so much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. Two young fellows are having a friendly talk, amid which, says 1st conductor, What did you do before you was a snatcher? In addition, Dalzell wrote the chapter on the slang of hip-hop in Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley by Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Language can be scrutinized and controlled in some places at some times, but it defies universal regulation, which allows its subversive nature to prevail.
The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds. The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of God within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. Women's, Keep-the-fire; Spiritual-woman; Second-daughter-of-the-house; Blue-bird. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology; the true science of Origins is yet in its cradle. Of all the vernacular, slang is the most spectacular.