Ode to Walt Whitman

As the title indicates, “Ode to Walt Whitman” is an ode. According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, an ode is a “formal, ceremonious, and complexly organized form of lyric poetry, usually of considerable length” (971). Lorca’s poem is rather long: It has 137 lines. The lines vary in length: Some have a mere three words and some cover most of the page, recalling Whitman’s long lines. In the English translation by Greg Simon and Steven F. White, Lorca’s lines are broken into 23 stanzas. As this guide focuses on Simon and White’s English translation, Lorca’s meter in Spanish is not discussed; meter in English and Spanish greatly differ due to various differences in the languages.

Generally, the stanzas in the English translation of Lorca’s poem could be considered free verse. In other words, stanza length varies from four to 11 lines. Specifically, nine stanzas contain four lines; three stanzas contain five lines; three stanzas contain six lines; three stanzas contain seven lines; two stanzas contain eight lines; one stanza contains nine lines; and two stanzas contain 11 lines.