Constructing the American Image through Urban Writing in Walt Whitman’s Poetry

Abstract

This article examines how urban writing contributes to the construction of the American image in Walt Whitman’s poetry. Rather than treating the city as a background for modern life, Whitman turns urban crowds, labor, transportation, infrastructure, and transnational circulation into materials for imagining America. The article identifies two connected dimensions of this image. Internally, urban spaces bring differentiated individuals into recurring structures of work, movement, and public experience, enabling Whitman to represent democratic community without erasing individual distinction. Externally, the city’s machines, bridges, ports, and global connections allow him to present the United States as modern, culturally self-confident, and engaged with the wider world. Close readings of Song of Myself, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Song of the Exposition, and A Broadway Pageant show that the city functions not simply as a subject but as a poetic mechanism through which a plural, democratic, modern, and outward-looking image of America is constructed.

Keywords

• Walt Whitman
• urban writing
• American image construction
• urban modernity

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