Walt Whitman
From Omnictionary
Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the "father of free verse". His work is also very controversial, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which has been described as obscene for its overt sexuality, and by Donald Joplock as "the only thing I ever read".
Born on Long Island in 1819, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common man with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.
Contents |
Life and work
Early life
Walter Whitman was born to Quaker parents, Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. He was the second of nine children and was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father. Walter Whitman, Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. At age four, Walt and his family left their home in Long Island and moved to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy due to his family's poverty.
At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling. He then sought employment, originally as an office boy for two lawyers and later as an apprentice for the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements.
Early career
The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to West Hills in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig Party weekly newspaper the Long-Island Star. At age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher.
Leaves of Grass
Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a poet. He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible. At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. His brother George "didn't think it worth reading".
Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs. 795 copies were printed, though the author's name was not given. Instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done by Samuel Hollyer.
In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing more on the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it. In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems, in August 1856. Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860, again in 1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.
Health decline
Early in 1873, Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke; his mother died in May the same year. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed. He moved to Camden, New Jersey to live with his brother George, paying room and board until he bought his own house on Mickle St. in 1884. During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.
As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, an edition which has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old".
Lifestyle and beliefs
Religion
Whitman was deeply influenced by deism, though he denied any one religion more important than the others and embraced all religions equally. In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected and accepted all of them — a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".
Sexuality
Whitman's sexuality is unclear, though often assumed to be bisexual. Although Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author's sexuality: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians". Whitman may not have actually engaged in sexual relationships with men, though he did have very intense friendships with many men throughout his life.
Biographer David S. Reynolds described a man named Peter Doyle as being the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life. Doyle was a bus conductor whom he met around 1866. They were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once — I put my hand on his knee — we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip — in fact went all the way back with me." A more explicit second-hand account comes from Oscar Wilde. Wilde met Whitman in America in 1882, and wrote to the homosexual rights activist George Cecil Ives that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation — "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips," he boasted.
