Walt Whitman Biography and List of Works

American poet, journalist and essayist, best known for LEAVES OF GRASS (1855), (which was occasionally banned), and the poems 'I Sing the Body Electric' and 'Song of Myself.' Whitman incorporated natural speech rhythms into poetry to a previously unknown extent. In his poems, the line is the rhythmical unit, meter is disregarded, but the overall effect has a melodic character.

"Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and
    knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all men ever born are also my brothers... and the
    women my sisters and lovers."
(from 'Song of Myself')

Whitman was born in Long Island, New York, the son of a Quaker carpenter. Whitman's mother was descended from Dutch farmers. In Whitman's childhood there were slaves employed upon the farm. Whitman was filled with a love of nature at an early age. He read classics in his youth and was inspired by such writers as Goethe, Hegel, Carlyle and Emerson. However, Whitman left school early to become a printer's apprentice, and worked as a teacher and journeyman printer in 1835. He held a great variety of jobs while writing and editing for several periodicals including, The Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848 and The Brooklyn Times from 1857 to 1858. In between he spent three months on a New Orleans paper, working for his father, and earning his living from undistinguished hackwork.

In New York Whitman witnessed the rapid growth of the city and wanted to write a new kind of poetry that could express the hopes of people who had arrived from all over the world to make a better life. The first edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in July 1855 at Whitman's own expense - he had set the type for it himself. The third edition was published during Whitman's Bohemian years in 1860. It was greeted with warm appreciation by, among others Ralph Waldo Emerson, but did not find popular success. When Whitman wrote the first edition, he knew little or nothing about Indian philosophy, but later critics have recognized Indian themes expressed in the poems - words from the Sanskrit are used correctly in some of the poems written after 1858. Leaves of Grass also includes a group of poems entitled 'Calamus', which has been taken as a reflection of the poet's homosexuality, although according to Whitman they in fact celebrate the 'beautiful and sane affection of man for man'.

During the Civil War Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington. When his brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman went to care for him and also for other Union and Confederate soldiers. The Civil War had its effect on Whitman, which is shown in his prose MEMORANDA DURING THE WAR (1875) and in the poems published under the title of DRUM-TAPS in 1865. In SEQUEL TO DRUM.TAPS (1865-66) contains the great elegy to President Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'. Another famous poem published about the death of Lincoln is 'O Captain! My Captain!'

"Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead."
(from 'O Captain, My Captain')

On the basis of his services Whitman was given a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. He transferred to the attorney general's office, when his chief labelled Leaves of Grass as an indecent book. "I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. I am the man, I suffered, I was there. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. Passage to India. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. A woman waits for me. When I give I give myself. The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. The never-ending audacity of elected persons. Pioneers! O Pioneers!" In England Whitman's work was better received - among his admirers were Alfred Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. An attack of paralysis in 1873 forced Whitman to give up his work. At the age of sixty-four, he settled in a little house on Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, where spent almost the rest of his life. He was taken care of by a widow he had befriended. His reputation as a poet, which was shadowed by his outspokenness on sexual matters, began to increase after recognition in England by Swinburne, Mrs Gilchrist, and E. Carpenter.

A newly augmented edition of Leaves of Grass was published in 1881. The following year Whitman published SPECIMEN DAYS AND COLLECT, and in 1888 appeared a collection of his newspaper pieces, NOVEMBER BOUGHS. His final volume was the 'Deathbed' edition of Leaves of Grass, which he prepared in 1891-92. It concludes with the prose piece 'A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads', in which he attempts to explain his life and work. Whitman died on March 26, 1892, in Camden.

Whitman's wavelike verse and his fresh use of language helped to liberate American poetry. He wanted to be a national bard, his prophetic note echoes the Bible, but his erotic candour separates him from conventionally romantic poets.

LEAVES OF GRASS: First presented as a group of 12 poems, followed by five revised and three reissued editions during the author's lifetime. Whitman maintained that a poet's style should be simple and natural, without orthodox meter or rhyme. The poems were written to be spoken, but have great variety in rhythm and tonal volume. The central theme arises from Whitman's pantheistic view of life, from symbolic identification of regeneration in nature. - Whitman's use of free verse had a deep influence on poetry. He was a great inspiring example for the beat-generation (Ginsberg, Kerouac etc.) .In the introduction of the work Whitman wrote: "The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity... nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But the speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable ness of the sentiment of threes in the woods and grass by the roadside in the flawless triumph of art."

For further reading: Reader's Guide by G.W. Allen (1970); Critical Essays on Walt Whitman, ed. by J. Woodress (1983); Language and Style by C.C.Hollis (1983); Walt Whitman by James E. Miller Jr., Helen Regenstein (1990); From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman by Philip Callow (1992); Masculine Landscapes by Byrne R.S. Fone (1992); The Growth of Leaves of Grass by M. Jimmie Killingsworth (1993); Walt Whitman; The Centennial Essays, ed. by Ed Folsom (1994); The Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman, ed. by Ezra Greenspan (1995); Walt Whitman by Catherine Reef (1995); Walt Whitman & the World, ed. by Gay Wilson Allen, Ed Folsom (1995); Walt Whitman: A Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall (1997); Walt Whitman: An Encyclopaedia, ed. by J.R. Lemaster, Donald D. Kummings (1998); Walt Whitman: A Comprehensive Research and Study Guide, ed. by Harold Bloom (1999); A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman, ed. by David S. Reynolds (1999); Walt Whitman, ed. by Jim Perlman (1999); Walt Whitman by Jerome Loving (1999) - other studies among others by J. Kaplan (1980); H. Aspiz (1980); W.H. Eitner (1981); P. Zweig (1984); D. Cavitch (1985); M.W. Thomas (1987) - Museums: Walt Whitman's birthplace, 246 Old Whitman Road, Huntington Station, Suffolk - Note: Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote Spoon River Anthology, published a biography of Walt Whitmanin in 1937.

FRANKLIN EVANS, (1842)