Born in a two-story, cedar-shingled house in Long Island, about thirty miles east of New York City.
Born in the same year as Herman Melville, James Russell Lowell, and Queen Victoria of England.
Father's family had democratic and heretical tendencies.
Walter Whitman, Sr., born on the day of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, trained his sons as radical democrats.
Identified with independent farmers and laborers, regarding financiers and power brokers as “the enemy.”
Mother's family of Dutch ancestry, inclined to the freethinking tradition of Quakers.
Whitman ascribed his creative impulses to her non-bookish sense of practical learning.
Felt her combination of the “practical and the materialistic” with the “transcendental and cloudy” might be the source of his own contradictory instincts.
Family moved to Brooklyn in 1823, then a bustling market town and the third-largest city in the U.S. by 1855, with a population of 200,000.
Father hoped to make a fortune in real estate but lacked the shrewdness.
The family moved about once every year for the next decade.
Walt went to work for the Long Island Patriot at age twelve in 1831.
Became a journeyman printer, but a fire and a quarrel with his father ended work opportunities.
Took a series of jobs as a country schoolteacher between 1836 and 1841.
Established warm relationships with students but clashed with school authorities due to his temper and stubbornness.
Moved back to New York City in 1841 but continued arguments with his father led him to live in a boardinghouse in lower Manhattan.
Published his earliest known writing, “Effects of Lightning,” in 1838.
Met people in the boardinghouse who became models for characters in his first novel, Franklin Evans (1842).
Published about a dozen short stories between 1841 and 1845, derivative and sentimental, but convinced him he could be a writer.
Maintained close contact with his family, acting as a third parent to his younger siblings.
Physical appearance: nearly six feet tall, about 180 pounds, large hands and feet, broad nose, full lips, and a bristling beard in later life.
Projected a rugged, masculine presence, but had a “curious feminine undertone.”
By 1848, worked for ten different newspapers, most prominently as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Active in Brooklyn political affairs, writing patriotic verse.
Involvement with the Democratic Party in Brooklyn drew him into the debate over slavery in the 1840s.
His stand on the Free Soil issue led to his firing from the Daily Eagle in 1848.
Worked briefly as editor of the New Orleans Crescent in 1848.
Rented a storefront in lower Manhattan to become a lecturer and “universal authority,” a “Professor of Things in General” like the hero of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833-1834).
Continued with real estate work during the late 1840s and early 1850s, including carpentry.
Enjoyed intellectual life in New York, befriending painters, actors, and writers.
Attended lectures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet”.
Studied phrenology, hydrology, archaeology, and debated Fourierism.
Listened to music of all sorts, from American folk music to Jenny Lind.
Referred to these times as “days of preparation; the gathering of the forces” for creating and publishing Leaves of Grass.
Claimed to have begun “elaborating the plan of my poems . . . experimenting much, writing and abandoning much” in 1847.
Began “definitely” writing the poems down in 1854.
First “notes” consisted of flashes of illumination, revelations of the self and its relationship to the world.
Invented a style appropriate for his subject, demonstrating that form is an extension of content.
Demonstrating that form is an extension of content, proving the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau’s contention that American poetry is nothing but “healthy speech.”
Registered the title Leaves of Grass on May 15, 1855, and brought the copyright notice to the printing office of Thomas and Joseph Rome.
Wrote, designed, produced, published, and promoted the book.
JustinKaplan said he made it “the center of his life, the instrument of health and survival itself.”
There were 795 copies of the first edition, with 200 bound in cloth at a unit cost of thirty-two cents, the remaining copies were given a cheaper binding.
The Manuscript remained in the Rome brothers’ print shop until it was burned accidently in 1858 “to kindle the fire”.
The frontispiece was a portrait, uncaptioned, of a bearded man, hand on his hip, hat rakishly askew.
Ten pages of prose were followed by eighty-three of poetry.
On page 29, the anonymous author revealed himself:
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly, fleshy and sensual . . . eating and drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . no more modest than immodest.
Actively promoted his own work, including gifting Leaves of Grass to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson replied with a five-page tribute, saluting the poet “at the beginning of a great career”.
Other reviews were less generous, but praise from people like Henry David Thoreau, Charles Eliot Norton, and others was sufficient encouragement.
Prepared the second edition in 1855 and 1856 composed the first draft of his great poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”.
He then titled the poem “Sundown Poem”.
Continued to supply friendly journals with information about and anonymous reviews of his work, and supplemented his income by writing and selling articles to various newspapers.
At Christmas, 1859, he published “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” then titled “A Child’s Reminiscence,” which was one of the new poems included in the 1860 edition.
Perhaps because of Emerson’s compliments, a Boston publisher, Thayer and Eldridge, offered to produce the second edition of Leaves of Grass, and although Emerson cautioned Whitman about some of the sexually suggestive poetry (arguing that unimpeded sales of the book depended on public acceptance), Whitman felt that the book would have to stand as it was.
Discarded the prose preface, retitled some of the poems, revised several and added 124 new ones, producing a thick volume of 456 pages, bound in orange cloth and stamped with symbolic devices.
Leaves of Grass Second Edition
Leaves of Grass was being “really published” for the first time with the new release.
The frontispiece was a portrait by a friend which presented Whitman wearing a coat, wide collar, expansive tie, and a grave, intent expression.
Events of a larger magnitude captured his attention rather than only focusing on the book reception.
In February 1861, Whitman saw Abraham Lincoln, already a protoheroic image for him of the New Man of the West, when the president traveled up Broadway to stay at the Astor.
In April of that year, 250,000 people filled the streets to welcome Major Robert Anderson, a soldier at Fort Sumter.
Whitman's admiration for Lincoln and his cause, plus his brother George’s rather impetuous enlistment, tempted the poet himself momentarily to consider military service.
Instead, his instinct for involvement in the great anguish of the Union, and his instinct to offer comfort to young men suffering, led him to New York hospitals, where he worked as a nurse (eighty percent of the nurses were male).
When his brother was wounded, he traveled to Virginia and shared mess and tent with George for a week.
In 1864, after a lifetime of exceptional health, he suffered a collapse as a result of stress, hypertension, and depression.
He was never quite as vigorous again.
He succeeded in obtaining a job as a government clerk in 1865, but after Lincoln’s death, the new administration swept his friends out and he lost his job.
In October 1865, Whitman published Drum Taps, including the poem “O Captain! My Captain!”.
Success during his lifetime came from the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”.
He was rehired by the government to work in the attorney general’s office in 1866.
William O’Connor offered strong support for his work in a sixty-page pamphlet, The Good Gray Poet (1866), and in a very positive review in The New York Times.
His work was beginning to develop a favorable reputation in Europe that surpassed the public estimate of his accomplishments in the United States.
As a kind of rejoinder to his old intellectual antagonist Carlyle, he published Democratic Vistas in 1871, agreeing with Carlyle’s pessimistic view of the “present” but envisioning a positive future for his country.
As a kind of poetic counterpart to Democratic Vistas, he also completed Passage to India (1871), in which he described materialistic concerns giving way to spiritual enlightenment.
Whitman suffered a stroke in January 1873.
His mother died in May of that year, a severe blow, and he was discharged from his government job in July.
Another stroke occurred in February 1875, but it did not keep Whitman from his enthusiastic plans for a centennial edition of Leaves of Grass, as well as readings and essays commemorating the event.
His recollections of his wartime experiences were published in Specimen Days and Collect in 1882 and 1883, which also contained his thoughts on the natural world.
In 1884, Whitman bought a house on Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, and slept under his own roof for the first time in his life.
He lived there for eight years, remaining true to the emblem on his writing table, “Make the Works,” through that time.
In January 1892, only two months before his death, he had prepared an announcement for what has become known as the “Death-Bed” edition of Leaves of Grass, and in his last years, he became, in the words of Allen Ginsberg, “lonely old courage teacher” to his friends and admirers.
On Leaves of Grass
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass had a lifespan of several editions and 37 years, for Whitman was constantly in the act of revising and augmenting his collection of poems, finally conceiving of it as a “single poem.”
Leaves of Grass first appeared in 1855, a thin volume of a dozen poems.
By the final impression in 1891–1892 (sanctioned the “deathbed” edition, which contains over 400 poems), the volume had expanded into the text we study today.
Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855 and contained only twelve poems.
Whitman continued to add to and revise his collection over the next 30 years.
Over the years, Whitman published a number of volumes of Leaves of Grass as he wrote more poems and increased the collection.
The earlier editions (1855, 1856, and 1860) announce the arrival of a brand-new voice in American literature and represent Whitman’s experimentation with form and subject matter in poetry.
In his work, Whitman ignores many poetic conventions in order to achieve his purpose of creating something new in American letters.
Whitman rarely follows a patterned rhyme scheme, and he is not concerned with any regularity of meter; indeed, his poetry is written in free verse, a style of writing that is appropriate to Whitman’s subject matter.
The later editions (1867, 1871, and 1881) are characterized by Whitman’s experiences while caring for the wounded during the Civil War and his response to the assassination of President Lincoln.
As Whitman kept crafting the editions of his masterpiece, he made extensive revisions, including adding new poems, retitling poems, reshuffling the order in which the poems appear, deleting or reworking lines in various poems, dropping several poems, and refashioning punctuation.
In an essay written late in his life, entitled “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads,” Whitman seems surprised by what he has accomplished:
My Book and I—what a period we have presumed to span! those thirty years from 1850 to ’80—and America in them! Proud, proud indeed may we be, if we have cull’d enough of that period in its own spirit to worthily waft a few live breaths of it to the future!
Indeed, Leaves of Grass grows as America changes, ever evolving with the landscape, politics, and vibrant life in America, which proved to be an endless source of material for the poet who was gifted with an unusual sensitivity to his surroundings.
On “Song of Myself”
One of the major poems of the collection, “Song of Myself” (Book III in Leaves of Grass), is divided into 52 separate sections and is comprised of 1,346 lines.
In “Song of Myself”, Whitman pays tribute to himself and his readers (“I celebrate myself and sing myself…”) as he depicts the physical, emotional, and spiritual world around him.
The poem begins with Whitman describing himself as he “loafes” or relaxes contentedly, “observing a spear of summer grass.”
The poet delights in his environment, fully appreciating the sights, sounds, and smells that surround him.
He tells his readers that in spite of the difficulties and distress human beings experience, the world and all life is, and always will be, perfect.
Hard times are always temporary, the poet says, and “they are not me myself.”
Whitman goes on to urge his readers to “loafe with me on the grass” so that they might fully appreciate their own lives and the world around them.
In the next major section of the poem, Whitman describes a colorful array of people— from happy children and young lovers to wagon drivers, blacksmiths, escaped slaves, and desperate, lonely adults—with equal appreciation and passion.
He goes on to portray hunters, deacons, machinists, drunkards, reporters, dancers, parents, prostitutes, pedlars, the President, brides, and “opium-eaters.”
Whitman then asserts that he is as much a part of all people as they are of him.
Even his thoughts, he claims, “are not original with me.”
He then ponders the meaning of his own and his readers’ lives (“What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?”), eventually deciding:
I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.
In Section 24, the poet calls himself a “kosmos.”
Whitman says he is part of everyone and all things, and he declares “Whoever degrades another degrades me.”
Next, Whitman continues his appreciation of ordinary pleasures, from a glorious sunrise to a single flower.
He tells us that he “will do nothing but listen,” and he goes on to list the many sounds he loves, including emotional music, the human voice, and even harsh city sounds such as “alarm bells” and “the cry of fire.”
Continuing his exploration of the mystical connection between all things, Whitman, in Section 31, returns to the central image of the entire collection when he writes: “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the/stars, / And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren…”
The poet then discusses the physical beauty and contentment of animals.
He goes on to list and celebrate a great variety of animals, objects, people, emotions, and events.
In Section 34, Whitman relates the terrible story of a company of Texan soldiers who were massacred by the Mexican army in 1836.
Then, in stirring detail, he describes a battle at sea between two warships.
In Section 43, Whitman discusses faith and religion.
He tells us:
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years…
He continues his discussion of God and spirituality as he concludes the poem.
In Section 44, Whitman says that it is “time to explain myself,” and in Section 48, he tells us: “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, / Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.”
Whitman concludes his long exploration of life and the universe by comparing himself to a spotted hawk: