What+is+with+the+apostrophes?

Throughout many of Whitman's pieces he replaces a lot of letters (vowels) with apostrophes. I know that we do that today in our writing with words such as don't, wouldn't, etc but he uses it in regular words and not just compound words.

A few examples are in his poem Song of Myself ~ Section 1: Line 6 - Form'd ~ Section 2: Line 9 - Buzz'd ~ Section 2: Line 11 - Dark-color'd

I know that its just a way to replace a letter...but is it really necessary? It gets kind of annoying. 1202775579

I don't think there's any great mystery behind this. It seems that Walt just liked the way it looked on the page and sounded in the ear. Despite WW's determination to be different from the regular poetry of his time, he is following a poetic convention with these contractions. Maybe it seemed to him that verbs written this way were somehow less formal and more casual ... kind of the the way someone today might write lol or g2g or brb.

Why do you find it annoying? It's just different.1202776722