Walt Whitman’s poems in his book, “Leaves of Grass” are very interesting because of the amount of descriptive details that he uses throughout his works. When read out loud, I was really able to imagine what Whitman was writing about at certain points. For example, in describing grass in Poem number 6, Whitman describes it as, “This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths” (1397). This description from Whitman gives us a much deeper detailed description of grass than we would usually think of it as by receiving sensory details from these lines. These sensual poems by Whitman goes to show the great detail he used in writing his poems and also shows the difference these sensory details make for his poems. Without these sensory details, his poems would be plain and simple and nothing would make his poems stand out. …show more content…
When reading his poems I was also able to hear some of the scenes he was describing through the use of the details that he displays. In Whitman’s Poem number 2, he describes, “The smoke of my own breath, echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, my respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of my blood and air through my lungs” (1393). Not was I only able to visualize the path of a breath going in to the lungs, I was also able to hear the echoing sound that a breath would make as it travels throughout the body. I think that using the sense of hearing as a sensory detail in a poem is very critical because it adds another dimension of complexity and detail to a poem such as this. This part of his poem really stood out to me after reading it out loud because of the fact that I was able to hear what Whitman was