Walt Whitman: Biography, Poetry, and Legacy
Classified in History
Written at on English with a size of 2.56 KB.
Walt Whitman
- Born in New York into a laboring family of agriculturists (the working class.)
- His family has nine children and he was the second childegan working at the age of 12 as a printer in Brooklyn and New York City.
- Became a journalist and editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in NY. He was later fired because he supported the antislavery Free Soil faction of the Democratic Party.
- Traveled via the Mississippi River to Louisiana and worked on the Crescent and later returned to NY.
- Saw many Shakespeare plays
- Back in NY he began experimenting with a new style of poetry
- Published his first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 with no publisher nor author name.
- The third edition of 1860 included Calamus and Premonition later called Started from Pumanok. During this time the Civil War began.
- Traveled to Washington because his brother was injured in war. He served as a nurse.
- Wrote now free verse poetry during CW era like Beat!Beat!Drums! The collection of war poems was called Drum-Taps. This collection was included in Leaves of Grass´s 4th edition of 1867.
- Suffered a stroke in 1873 which left him partly paralyzed.
- Traveled to Camden New Jersey because his mother was dying. When she died this became the cloud of his life because it affected him.
- His 5th version of L of G was claimed immoral
- In Leaves of Grass he addressed the citizens of America to be generous in spirit, a new race in political liberty and possessed of united souls and bodies.
- He created a new form of free verse without rhyme or metre.
- For his personal poems we can find Song of Myself
- It is presumed that he had a homosexual affair.
- He died in Camden New Jersey.
- At the time of his death he was more respected in Europe as a symbol of American democracy.
- I Hear America Singing is his working America poem.
Schools
- Emerson: Transcendentalism
- Thoreau: Transcendentalism
- Longfellow: Romanticism
- Whitman: Romanticism
Topics
- Emerson: Philosophical and Nature
- Thoreau: Nature, Liberty, Simple Living
- Longfellow: History of America, Family, Translations, Teaching and Philosophy
- Whitman: Civil War, Personal/Philosophical, Working America