Teaching Tips: A Passage to India, by Walt Whitman

• Whitman writes in free verse—without regular rhyme or meter—but is it really free? What poetic devices does he use to structure his poetry? How does he use line length and sentence structure to keep his lines varied and appealing to the ear?
• How does the act of praising something change that something or give it new meaning? What inventions or projects might a poet praise now, and why?
• What type of society does Whitman seem to be arguing for and celebrating? Has Whitman's dream for the future come true?
• How has Eastern thought and religion influenced the world we live in?
• Examine the role of the speaker in this poem. How easy is it, in this particular poem, to separate the poet from his speaker?
• Which parts of this poem use the diction of "myths and fables"? Which parts seem "modern" or "scientific"? What other different dictions can you spot in the poem—either in this excerpt or in "Passage to India" as a whole?