Walt Whitman's Life and Accomplishments

1128 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: themes in walt whitmans writings

Born in Long Island, New York on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second of nine children born into a Democratic family (Benka). By eleven, Whitman ended his formal education and sought employment to financially support his family (Benka). He was able to acquire a job as an apprentice on the Long Island Patriot, where he was exposed to the printing trade and was able to discover his own style of writing (Benka). At age fourteen, Whitman was able to expand his knowledge of writing by working under the Patriot’s foreman editor William Hartshorne (Hall). These early years in New York would allow Whitman to hone his skills of close observation and to enhance his grasp on language via reading numerous authors (e.g., Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper) and watching plays in theaters (Hall).
On July 4, 1855, Whitman published 795 copies of his first edition of Leaves of Grass. To his surprise, the biggest praise for Leaves of Grass came from Ralph Waldo Emerson in the form of a five page letter (Folsom). Whitman started to get attention from the public and other writers significantly due to Emerson’s approval. There was, however, controversy because many critics called the book “obscene” and “trashy” due to the explicit nature of the book (Folsom). Thanks to Leaves of Grass, Whitman is able to define his writing as “al fresco” poetry, which is poetry written outside the normal boundaries of convention and tradition (Hall).
During Whitman’s life, the Civil War proved to have the largest impact on his writing. From the outset, Whitman believed the strength of the nation lay not in the leaders but in the hardworking, patriotic citizens (Folsom). Early in the war, he visited and nursed injured working men and women at Broadway H...

... middle of paper ...

...avily emphasized points of togetherness and individual cooperation.

Works Cited

Benka, Jennifer. "Walt Whitman." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2013. Web. 01 Mar.
2014. .
Folsom, Ed, and Kenneth Price. "The Walt Whitman Archive." Whitman Archive. University of
Iowa, 08 Jan. 2013. Web. 02 Mar. 2014.
.
Hall, Nancy. "WALT WHITMAN, PATRIOT POET." PBS. PBS, 2002. Web. 02 Mar. 2014.
.
Whitman, Walt. "I Hear America Singing." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2014. Web.
02 Mar. 2014. .
Whitman, Walt. “One’s Self I Sing.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 9th ed. Ed. Michael
Meyer. New York: Bedford, 2011. 1351. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Leaves Of Grass By Walt Whitman

    1592 Words  | 4 Pages

    Whitman’s work has an arguable style that makes his work appear as an egotistical piece of literature for some and others may find a different deeper meaning within his work. This work is an excellent example of patriotic work that attempts better its audience throughout by making revelations and comparisons of different idea and thoughts about the nation's people. Whitman illustrates his interpretation of what a kind of person is a great person is and how they go about life. He intends to make his audience better as a whole and understand the underlying problem that some have. Whitman's writing truly expresses his feelings about his time and what he expects from them for a better

    Read More

  • The Value Of Conformity In Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the span of this semester, much of the literature discussed revolved around the so-called renaissance of American literature and its impact upon both the nation and its people. Of all the authors studied in this time period, Walt Whitman may well be known as the quintessential American author. Famous for breaking every rule known to poetry in the inimitable compilation, Song of Myself, Whitman provided a fresh and insightful commentary upon the dualistic nature of society, love, and life itself. Through defining these essential aspects of humanity, Whitman indeed composed one of the most accurate and enduring definitions of the individual self that literature, American or otherwise, has ever seen. Specifically, this was done through

    Read More

  • Criticism Of Walt Whitman

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    (A critique of Walt Whitman’s themes and ideas in Song of Myself 6, 46, 47)

    Read More

  • Whitman's Critique of American Democracy

    1594 Words  | 4 Pages

    The soldiers that fought during the civil war were fighting for their livelihood. The northern soldiers needed to bring the south back to the north, and the southerners were fighting to keep their way of life. Whitman was amazed at how far each side was willing to go and was amazed at the sacrifices that the men gave to their causes. The soldiers according to Whitman went through hell just to get to battle which if in the case of Gettysburg was even worse. Food was hard to come by, their clothes were tattered, they marched through heat, cold, rain, through mud, and anything that they needed to to get to where their next battle was, only to march on again once the battle has past (Whitman 333). While Whitman worked as a nurse, he was moved by how strong the soldiers were, and when he was going from Fredericksburg to Washington D.C., he wrote to the wounded soldiers families, as he felt that this was one of the best was he could comfort soldiers as they traveled to hospitals (Home). Whitman’s dedication to these wounded soldiers shows how even if he couldn’t fight in the war, he could help in the recovery of the injured. Walt Whitman thought that the way that the developing culture of the arts was beginning to take shape in what was going on around America. Claiming wilderness for fertile farmland, being able to ship goods anywhere along the coast and further, and expanding the railroad so it could touch the furthest reaches of the Louisiana Purchase allowed new ideas to flow and mingle in the new areas and then be condensed into literature and

    Read More

  • A Defense of Whitman

    1213 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whether they have loved or loathed his poetry, each writer or critic who has encountered "Leaves of Grass" has had to come to some sort of reckoning with Walt Whitman. The Good Gray Poet, the grandfather of American poetry, has been deified by some and labeled a cultural and artistic barbarian by others. While Whitman freely admitted in his preface to the final publication of "Leaves of Grass" that the work was faulty and far from perfect, some critics see no redeeming qualities in Whitman's art. Henry James goes so far as to say, "Whitman's verse...is an offense to art." (James, p.16) James chastises Whitman for extolling and exploiting what James feels are truisms. To James, Whitman's poetry is completely self-aggrandizing; it lacks substance and coherence. Through an examination of a specific poem, "The Wound Dresser", the claims of James and other negative critics can be refuted.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman Characteristics

    196 Words  | 1 Pages

    Once Whitman published his book Leaves of Grass, he was heavily criticized by his writing style and subject matter. According to an article by PoetryFoundation.org “Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during

    Read More

  • ‘America’ by Walt Whitman.

    1673 Words  | 4 Pages

    We are going to take a look at just one poem and I hope you are as influenced as I am about this poem. It is called America. Whitman is deemed to be a successor to Shakespeare and Virgil. He arose from the Long Island and grew up in Brooklyn where he a small amount of formal education. During his life, he worked as a printer, editor, schoolteacher, and reporter. His self-published Leaves of Grass got its partial inspiration from his tours through the American Frontier and by the admiration he had for Ralph Waldo Emerson.

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of Walt Whitman And Emily Dickinson

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whitman saw America as a land of opportunity, yet realized that the Civil War was a stain on its potential. In his poetry, the writer was able to demonstrate both the country’s positives and downfalls, which is epitomized in “O Captain! My Captain!” In this tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Whitman transitions from “Exult O shores, and ring O bells!”

    Read More

  • Whitman

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and influential writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitman’s writing is so free form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his very democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitman’s writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other then its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitman’s work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his contemporaries such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of free association.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Whitman was drawn to the nations capital roughly a year after the Civil War began, at the age of forty-three. The wounding of his brother, George Washington Whitman, who served in the Union Army, precipitated his contact with the carnage of the war. Reading the notice of his brother’s injury in the New York Herald, Whitman went immediately to Falmouth, Virginia, where he found his brotherly only slightly wounded. Perpetually short-handed, Army officials asked the poet to help transport injured soldiers to field hospitals in Washington. Whitman agreed, and began a mission of mercy that would occupy him from 1862 until the war’s end in 1865 (Murray).

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism in the Poems of Whitman

    2115 Words  | 5 Pages

    Stedman, Edmund Clarence. "An Important American Critic Views Whitman." Critical Essays on Walt Whitman. Ed. James Woodress. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. 116-127.

    Read More

  • ‘America’ by Walt Whitman.

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walt Whitman is arguably America’s most influential poet in history. Born Walter Whitman in May 31st, 1819 to Walter Whitman and Louisa van Velsor, he was immediately nicknamed ‘Walt’ to distinguish him from his father. He came to life in West Hills on the famous Long Island, the second of nine children that grew up in Brooklyn. He came to be fondly known as ‘the Bard of Democracy’, mainly because that was a main message in his work. He is also celebrated as ‘the father of the free verse’. He was a liberal thinker and was vehemently against slavery, although later on he was against the abolitionists because, according to him, they were anti-democracy. He managed to marry transcendentalism with realism in his works. His occupation was a printer school teacher and editor.

    Read More

  • Walt Whitman: The American Poet

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    As Whitman, the specific individual, melts away into the abstract, “Song of Myself” explores the possibilities for communion between individuals. Whitman addresses the reader in a particularly direct manner. He integrates his reader into the poem, and is freed of the constraints of poetic principle and social etiquette. The poem presents entire body lounging on the ground, leaning and idling. Whitman deliberately conflates natural world and poetical world. “Song of Myself” goes beyond the boundaries of Transcendentalism in the relationship of the physical and spiritual, individual and universal. The self that Whitman cheerily sings and celebrates substantiates a ‘uniform hieroglyphic’: suggestive, multiform, and awash with inconsistency. “It is as much a physical presence as a projected spiritual possibility” (Jason 2). Even as it blatantly and fervently expresses Whitman’s faith in evolution (and therefore in the necessary indivisibility of self-reliance), “Song of Myself” also conveys a separation with the “self,” the poet himself, and the co...

    Read More

  • Individuality in Whitman's Song of Myself

    1259 Words  | 3 Pages

    *Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed. Ed, Paul Lauter. Boston,NewYork: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

    Read More

  • Individuality And Democracy In Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poet was fascinated with the realization that masses of unique individuals construct a single democracy under which everyone is amalgamated. As aforementioned, this paradoxical concept of individuality coexisting with unity and equality is evident in “Song of Myself” (Chase 132). Whitman believed the theme of unity is a common link embracing all humanity. Whitman also felt that “one of the founding beliefs of American democracy is the fundamental equality of all people” (Casale 49). In “Song of Myself,” the people portrayed as a collection of distinct individuals with their own soul and

    Read More

More about Walt Whitman's Life and Accomplishments

Open Document