Honoring the Working Man

Until about the Mid-19th Century, almost all poetry followed a rather specific structure that covered rhyme, rhythm, meter, and form. While all traditional poets threw in their small variations of this structure, they were all fairly limited to what they were able to write. It's actually a little odd that structure such as this was followed for so long in that it was based primarily off of precedent. There were never any legal disputes regarding poetic form, so it just seems a bit surprising that not one person had successfully gone against this method until American poetry came into the picture. That being said, one of the greatest American poets, Walt Whitman, was really the first to successfully pioneer a poetic form known as free verse. Free verse is basically poetry without guidelines or form of any kind. A great example of free verse through Whitman is his poem, "America", which is fairly well known. He is able to describe exactly how he feels by just explicitly stating his point without implying a message through rhymes and rhythm, which would later prove to be an incredibly important concept that would shape the way a lot of both poetry and music would be written in the future. Since Whitman commonly used this brand new style of poetry to express his opinion, he was able to get his point across really easily and state exactly how he felt.
Therefore, not only did Whitman pioneer an entirely new poetic structure, but, by doing so, he also introduced a number of themes by really putting himself into the picture. He did this, of course, by removing the narrative from traditional poetry and replacing it with pure opinion. One of the main themes that Whitman often used was his glorification of the working class individual. Whitman, himself, belonged to the lower-middle class, so it isn't hard to see why he felt the way that he did. He had the idea that, while high class may think negatively of lower class citizens, they would not be where they were without the support of the lower class. It's an easy concept to take in, and it is really quite philosophical. While this theme had broken out in history before (the French Revolution), but was surprisingly nonexistent as a theme in poetry. However, his inclusion of this theme didn't end up stopping at that point. In fact, a lot of artists still use this theme today, in songs, books, and poems. Most of these are just intended to connect with the consumer by telling to overcome being at, or near, the bottom of society. However, none of these artists were quite as humanitarian as Whitman, so they didn't really convey the same message of a mutual relationship between upper and lower classes.
It wasn't until the late 1990's that this feeling was captured as well in a pop cultural manner. Although, it may not have been the band's intention, the popular metal group, Slipknot, used their entire fan base off of an idea really to close to what Whitman was saying over two hundred years beforehand. Slipknot refers to their fans as "maggots", which they basically use as a derogatory term for people at the bottom of society. This term, however, isn't meant to insult their fans at all, it's really just a sarcastic of describing themselves as others might. Regardless, the message that Slipknot pushes through with the whole idea of "maggots", is that the world is driven by "The Pulse of the Maggots", and the world would be nowhere without the working classes supporting the bottom of the structure. They have the most work, but get the least payout, and that, in my opinion, is why so many artists, honor the image of the working class.