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The Wonders of Walt
Influential poet, Walt Whitman graced the 19th century with a wondrous collection of poetry which would not be truly appreciated for its worth and merit until many years later. He was considered to be “in the vanguard of a poetic revolution in western civilization” with his radical poetic style (Mitilineos, 5). He spent the majority of his career as a poet and a journalist, and would later be known as the Great American Poet. By using the experiences in his life, and the world around him, he developed a new sense of poetry ensconced within the transcendentalist and romantic periods. Walt Whitman spent the majority of his life developing a rich collection of poetry in which he attempted to capture the diversities of life, as well as experiment with a whole new style of poetry by abandoning orthodox principles.
Walter was born May 31, 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York. He was born into a Quaker household as the second oldest amongst nine other brothers and sisters. Almost immediately he became known as “Walt” in order to differentiate between himself and his father. He attended public school for six years and at the age of eleven he was forced to drop out in order to help provide for the family. At an early age his family moved to Brooklyn New York in hopes that financial difficulties would simmer, but Walt still could not attend school. As an office boy, Walt learned how to read and write from lawyer James B. Clarke , and signed him up at the local lending library, which is where his love for literature began to flourish. (Woodbridge, 195).
After several jobs as an office boy, Walt began working for a local newspaper setting type. This marked the beginning of his career in writing and literature. He began publishing in the mid 1800s, and “forever changed peoples sense of what a poet could be, and what a poem could look and sound like” (Woodbrige, 194). His literary career stemmed from being a journalist as he began writing short reviews for newspapers. He eventually followed his family back to Long Island where he became a school teacher, and the first signs of his free thinking methods were developed when he refused to scold his students through violence. Because of his radical thoughts, he was often bouncing from job to job, as they usually showed his revolutionary attitude. He was an abolitionist and “loved the diversities of life” (194). It was shortly after becoming a teacher that Whitman began working on Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry devoted to the people and life around him, such as the Civil War, big cities, and his experiences.
Shortly after his father died, and after several editions and releases of Leaves of Grass, Walts brother was injured in the Civil War and he traveled to Washington D.C. To take care of him. “The Civil War proved to be a crucial period in Whitmans life” (197). He became a volunteer nurse and assisted the soldiers in anyway possible, all the while establishing Abraham Lincoln as a major hero in his life. His experiences throughout the Civil War, as with past experiences in his life can be found in certain sections of Leaves of Grass.
The last twenty years of Whitmans life were a mix of depression and sickness. He suffered a stroke and lost his mother in 1873. He took to himself, living in Camden, New Jersey, as he prepared what would be the final edition or the “deathbed edition” of Leaves of Grass. He died on March