What are some of the poetic techniques used in the poem "O me! O life!" ?

"O Me! O Life!" is part of Walt Whitman's collection of
poems Leaves of Grass.  In "O Me! O life!" Whitman raises an
existential question: "What good" can be found in life amid "the endless trains of the
faithless" and the "cities fill'd with the foolish"?

The
primary poetic technique that Whitman uses in this poem is
anaphora: the repetition of the same word or phrase at the
beginning of successive clauses or verses.   The bulk of the poem consists of phrases
that begin with the word "of":

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Of the endless trains of the faithless, of
cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who
more foolish than I,
    and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that
vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
    struggle ever
renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I
see
    around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with
the rest me
intertwined

Another technique
Whitman uses is alliteration--the repetition of initial consonant
sounds.  In lines 2-4, for example, Whitman uses 7 words that start with the letter f:
faithless, fill'd, foolish, forever, for, foolish, faithless.  From line 7 to the end of
the poem, 4 words start with the letter p: poor, plodding, powerful, play.  It is
interesting to note that powerful and play are nearly the opposites of poor and
plodding.