Walt Whitman (1819–1892) is one of the most significant poets of the 19th century, and many critics consider him America's greatest poet. His book "Leaves of Grass," is a masterpiece of American literature. In addition to writing poetry, Whitman worked as a journalist and volunteered in military hospitals.
Walt Whitman was born in the village of West Hills on Long Island, New York. He was the second of eight children. Whitman’s father was of English descent, and his mother was Dutch. In 1822, when Walt was two years old, the Whitman family moved to Brooklyn. After finishing public school in Brooklyn, Whitman began working at the age of 11. He was an office boy for a law office before becoming an apprentice printer at a newspaper. In his late teens, Whitman worked for several years as a school teacher in rural Long Island. In 1838, he founded a weekly newspaper on Long Island. He reported and wrote stories, printed the paper, and even delivered it on horseback. By the early 1840s, he had broken into professional journalism, writing articles for magazines and newspapers in New York.
Early writing efforts by Whitman were fairly conventional. In the mid-1840s, Whitman became the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, but his political views, which were aligned with the upstart Free Soil Party, eventually got him fired. He then took a job working at a newspaper in New Orleans. The job only lasted a few months.
By the early 1850s he was still writing for newspapers, but his focus had turned to poetry. In 1855, Whitman published the first edition of "Leaves of Grass." The book was unusual, as the 12 poems it included were untitled and were set in type (partly by Whitman himself) that looked more like prose than poetry. While Whitman apparently hoped to become the poet of the common man, his book initially went largely unnoticed. However, "Leaves of Grass" did attract Ralph Waldo Emerson who was greatly impressed, and wrote a letter to Whitman stating: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Whitman saw "Leaves of Grass" as his life’s work. Rather than publishing new books of poems, he began a practice of revising the poems in the book and adding new ones in successive editions.
In 1861 during the beginning of the Civil War, Whitman’s brother George enlisted in a New York infantry regiment. In December 1862, Walt, believing his brother may have been wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, traveled to the front in Virginia.
The proximity to the war, to soldiers, and especially to the wounded had a profound effect on Whitman. He became deeply interested in helping the wounded and began volunteering in military hospitals in Washington. By the end of the Civil War, Whitman had found a comfortable job working as a clerk in a government office in Washington. That came to an end when the newly installed secretary of the interior, James Harlan, discovered that his office employed the author of "Leaves of Grass" which he considered offensive. After Harlan fired him, Whitman worked in the attorney general's office.
In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A few months later he traveled to Camden, New Jersey, to visit his dying mother at his brother’s house. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass, which brought him enough money to buy a modest cottage in Camden. In this house, Whitman spent his declining years, working on additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye My Fancy. After his death, Whitman was interred in a tomb of his own design in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.
Whitman’s poetry was revolutionary, both in subject and style. Though considered eccentric and controversial during his lifetime, his poems remain unparalleled in their mass appeal and reach. From collective belonging to individual expression, from romantic idealism to scientific realism, from deep spirituality to animalistic sensuality, he grappled with the conflicting forces in life seeking to arrive at a mean ground. Always empathizing with the common man's struggles, Whitman's poetry assures that solace can always be found in each other, in nature and in God. His legacy lives on as his enigmatic life and poetry continue to inspire and tantalize readers generation after generation.

Music credits: Helen by Nikos Spiliotis
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