The Poetry of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was an immense talent, and a prodigious one at that. Associated with the free verse movement, his poems are usually on the longer side. Iconic works such as “Leaves of Grass” divided opinion on their publication. Some argued it was obscene, others such as Ralph Waldo Emerson rallied to his cause. Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 on Long Island. By the age of eleven, his schooling was finished and he embarked on a series of jobs that eventually led to various newspaper editorships. He began to write poetry in the 1840s, and in 1855 he published his first of many versions of “Leaves Of Grass.” Thereafter he wrote solidly until his death on March 26, 1892. He is buried in Camden, New Jersey. Whitman wrote that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.”