Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

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Classic journalist and poet, Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York. His family financial background was of a meek proportion in comparison to its large size. Whitman’s commitment to the family catapulted him into employment at a very young age depriving him of a formal education in his adolescent years. The absence of a formal education was not a hindrance for the young Whitman; his self-education through reading and exploration of the written word eventually led him to his first teaching post at the very young age of seventeen, an unacceptable happening in todays 21st century. A career of journalism soon was on the horizon for this young educator that of which he explored after his fifth year of teaching. Whitman conveyed robust ideas based on primary matters social and political in nature such as women’s rights and slavery. (Walt) The volatility shown in his journalistic style on city and political matters is often hard to relate as the same poetic songwriter found in melodic notes of one such as Whitman as what is found in the poem, “Song of the Open Road”. If education could have been afforded him it is likely that his opportunities would have been expanded in musicality, learning the ways of writing music to as yet another way to present his arty works in the poetry of words.
Whitman began writing his most well known work in the year of 1848; nearly seven years later he completed a substantial amount of writings all housed under the cover of “Leaves of Grass” in which “Song of the Open Road” is permanently housed. Whitman gifts the reader with seventeen verses identifying a prolific time in his life as a war journalist out on the open road but moreover the open road of spirit and breath of life. This...

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