Walt Whitman

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”

  • Name: Walt Whitman
  • Born: May 31, 1819
  • Died: March 26, 1892
  • From: West Hills, New York
  • Pronouns: he/him
  • Contribution/Impact: “America’s poet”. He was an American Transcendentalist, journalist, essayist, and poet.
  • Known For: Leaves of Grass, Oh Captain! My Captain!
  • Awards: Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Academy of American Poets
  • Interesting Facts: He took care of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. He funded Leaves of Grass with his own money, and  began working at the age of 12.
WALT WHITMAN
Walt Whitman by National Museum of American History Smithsonian , CC BY-NC 2.0, via Flickr

Born in 1819 in New York, Whitman grew up in a farming family, who had received very little formal education. In 1823, Whitman’s family moved to Brooklyn, where Whitman attended public school and learned the printing trade at the age of 12. Before the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Whitman worked as a teacher, printer, and journalist. During the Civil War, Whitman spent his free time visiting wounded and depressed soldiers in local hospitals, and he became a clerk with the Department of Interior after the war. Walt Whitman is known for his ‘stream of consciousness’ free-verse poems that make keen observations about nature and the state of humanity. His work is void of clear structure and rhyme schemes, and is reflective in his ideas about the importance of nature and individualism.

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