How is "A Noiseless Patient Spider" important as a typical American poem? Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider”  succinctly
expresses the essence of transcendentalism: the understanding that knowledge, especially
spiritual knowledge, comes from within the soul of every individual via his personal
relationship with nature.  Moreover, Whitman expresses this using his own distinctly
American free verse genre,  which broke free of the traditions of regular rhyme scheme,
meter, and versification  It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, however,  who introduced
Transcendentalism to American Literature and the world, a philosophy which broke with
traditional church organization and academic study and promoted  instead the realization
that truth and spirituality lie within one’s self, deep seated within one’s
consciousness and intuition, and independent of or ‘transcendental’ to logic, doctrine,
or empirical observation.  In his seminal essay “Nature” he describes his elevated
states of consciousness and sublime realizations experienced during his solitary walks
through nature.

In the forth line of the poem
“It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself”  Whitman finds expressed
in nature the transcendentalist’s belief that knowledge lies within the self and is
expressed throughout nature.  Just as the spider is launching filaments from within
itself, so the contemplative, or “noiseless, patient” soul is  “ceaselessly musing,
venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.”  Just as the isolated spider
waits in the center of its web, so the meditative soul of the transcendentalist is
“surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.” Of course, unlike the spider who
is trying to catch prey, the poet’s soul is seeking some sublime and subtle thread of
meaning and relationship in the vastness of the
universe.

Walt Whitman, with his lines of varying length
spontaneously creates his own American meters and verse forms, which though irregular,
create patterns of their own as he spews forth his poem. Note, for example, his new
poetic device of repetition of words: I mark'd where, Mark'd how; It launch'd forth
filament, filament, filament; Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them;  Till
the bridge, till the ductile anchor, till the gossamer thread;  The use of the phrase O
my soul at the beginning and the end of the second stanza is another novel poetic
device, replacing the use rhyme to create enchantment.  And this breaking with
tradition, this creating of something new and wonderful, and distinctly personal is
clearly an expression of the American spirit.

And Walt
Whitman, with his lines of varying length spontaneously creates his own American meters
and verse forms, which though irregular, create patterns of their own as he spews forth
his poem. Note, for example, his new poetic device of repetition of words: I mark'd
where, Mark'd how; It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament; Ever unreeling them,
ever tirelessly speeding them;  Till the bridge, till the ductile anchor, till the
gossamer thread;  The use of the phrase O my soul at the beginning and the end of the
second stanza is another novel poetic device, replacing the use rhyme to create
enchantment.  And this breaking with tradition, this creating of something new and
wonderful, and distinctly personal is clearly an expression of the American
spiriit.