Student's name: sara sadun saud alrashidi

Dr name's :manal

ENGL-168

20 February 2021
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He
was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the
1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and
Brooklyn, where Whitman attended the Brooklyn public schools.

At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer’s trade and fell in love with
the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with
the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing
district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his career
as teacher in the one-room schoolhouses of Long Island. He continued to teach until
1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career.

He founded a weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander, and later edited a number of

Brooklyn and New York papers, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1848, Whitman
left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent for three
months. After witnessing the auctions of enslaved individuals in New Orleans, he
returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and co-founded a “free soil” newspaper, the
Brooklyn Freeman, which he edited through the next fall. Whitman’s attitudes about
race have been described as “unstable and inconsistent.” He did not always side with
the abolitionists, yet he celebrated human dignity.

In Brooklyn, he continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished
Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of
Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published
the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a
second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-two poems, a letter from Emerson
praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his
lifetime, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of
the book. Noted Whitman scholar, M. Jimmie Killingsworth writes that “the ‘merge,' as
Whitman conceived it, is the tendency of the individual self to overcome moral,
psychological, and political boundaries. Thematically and poetically, the notion
dominates the three major poems of 1855: ‘I Sing the Body Electric,' ‘The Sleepers,' and
‘Song of Myself,' all of which were ‘merged’ in the first edition under the single title
Leaves of Grass but were demarcated by clear breaks in the text and the repetition of
the title.”

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a “purged” and “cleansed” life.
He worked as a freelance journalist and visited the wounded at New York City–area
hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D. C. in December 1862 to care for his
brother, who had been wounded in the war.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to

stay and work in the hospitals; he ended up staying in the city for eleven years. He took
a job as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior,
which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman
was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. After Harlan fired him,
he went on to work in the attorney general's office.

In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A few months later
he travelled to Camden, New Jersey, to visit his dying mother at his brother’s house. He
ended up staying with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass (James R.
Osgood), which brought him enough money to buy a home in Camden.

In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on
additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (David McKay, 1891–
92) and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye My Fancy (David
McKay, 1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he
designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one of America’s most important poets.
(What makes walt Whitman unique)?Whitman is considered the father of free-versepoetry. But
he was much more than that. He introduced readers topreviously forbidden topics -- sexuality,
the human body and itsfunctions -- and incorporated unusual themes, such asdebris, straw and
leaves, into his work.

American Literature

Walt Whitman

A picture of the author Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) is one of American's most famous poets. He was considered a
humanist; believing that the value of human beings, individually and together, held primacy over
established practices, faiths and doctrines. Whitman embraced intuition and emotion over
rationality, and became a great contributor to the genre of writing known as Transcendentalism,
a philosophical belief that the divine spirit resides within all of us, and in the inherent goodness
of man and nature.
9: Things You Might Not Know About Walt Whitman:

1. WALT WHITMAN STARTED WORKING AT AGE 11.

Whitman’s formal education didn’t last very long. Living in New York with his parents, and with
his father struggling to make ends meet, Whitman left school at age 11 to help contribute to the
household. He got work assisting a law office in the city before turning to the printing business,
developing skills that would later inform his work in self-publishing. He continued to educate
himself, eventually becoming a teacher at the age of 17.

2. WHITMAN KEPT REVISING LEAVES OF GRASS.

After stints in teaching and journalism, Whitman collected 12 of his poems for Leaves of Grass, a
self-published 1855 book that would go on to become his best-known work. But where most
authors leave finished titles behind, Whitman considered Leaves to be a malleable volume. He
repeatedly went back to it, changing the order of poems, adding new ones, retitling old ones,
and tinkering with the typeset. By the time of his death in 1892, nine versions of Leaves had
been published, the last with around 400 poems (including two annexes).
3. WHITMAN REVIEWED—AND RAVED—ABOUT LEAVES OF GRASS (ANONYMOUSLY).

To stir up interest for Leaves, Whitman took the audacious step of “reviewing” his book for New
York area newspapers without a byline. “An American bard at last!” he wrote, raving,
“Transcendent.” The endorsements apparently didn’t help sales much, with the initial run of the
book selling just a few copies.

4.ONE VERSION OF LEAVES OF GRASS WAS BANNED IN BOSTON.

Whitman’s tinkering with Leaves of Grass reflected his evolving attitudes regarding human
sexuality, including the then-unpopular belief that homosexuality was natural. In 1882, Boston
district attorney Oliver Stevens banned a version of the book that Whitman purposely had
printed to resemble a Bible. The contents, Stevens believed, violated statutes about “obscene
literature.”

5. WHITMAN WAS A MISSIONARY DURING THE CIVIL WAR.

Whitman, nearly 42, was an unlikely candidate for a soldier when the Civil War began, but his
brother George enlisted in the Army. When Whitman saw his brother's name listed as one of the
wounded in 1862, he traveled to Washington and then Virginia to visit. George was fine, but
Whitman was struck by the physical toll the war had taken on other soldiers. He stayed in
Washington and began a steady rotation of the area’s hospitals, bringing food and books to the
wounded. The goods were paid for by donations from friends, as well as Whitman’s own salary
working for the Army Paymaster.

6. WHITMAN WAS A HEALTH AND FITNESS GURU.

Whitman did not cut a figure as a man of action, but he was still very much interested in physical
fitness. He wrote a series of articles for the New York Atlas in the 1850s under the pen name
“Mose Velsor” that detailed his approach to diet and wellness. Whitman advocated “manly
training” like brisk walks, dancing, and frequent bathing to cure ills and ward off depression. He
also considered beards to be effective barriers against germs.
7. BRAM STOKER WAS A BIG FAN OF WHITMAN'S.

The future author of Dracula was so enamored with Whitman’s work that he and his friends
called themselves “Walt Whitmanites.” Stoker didn’t consider himself a peer, however: After
composing a gushing letter to Whitman in 1872, he kept it in a drawer for four years before
working up the courage to send it. “I do not know whether it is unusual for you to get letters
from utter strangers who have not even the claim of literary brotherhood to write you,” Stoker
wrote. “If it is you must be frightfully tormented with letters and I am sorry to have written this.
I have, however, the claim of liking you—for your words are your own soul and even if you do
not read my letter it is no less a pleasure to me to write it.” Whitman wrote a gracious letter
back thanking him for the kind words.

8. WHITMAN WROTE A MYSTERY NOVEL THAT WAS LOST FOR MORE THAN 165 YEARS.

In 1852, Whitman serialized a short 36,000 word mystery novel titled The Life and Adventures of
Jack Engle in a New York newspaper. Few readers paid it much attention, and fewer still had any
reason to try and retrieve it from any archives—Whitman published it without a byline. It was
rediscovered in 2017 by Whitman historian Zach Turpin, who found some familiar phrases
during an online newspaper search for Whitman material. The book was reissued that year. The
finding pleased Whitman enthusiasts but probably would not have been pleasing to Whitman
himself, who threatened to “shoot” anyone who dredged up his earlier, “crude” works for
republication

9. WHITMAN DESIGNED HIS OWN TOMB.

As a final creative impulse, Whitman elected to design his own granite mausoleum in Camden,
New Jersey’s Harleigh Cemetery. Shaped like a house, the monument was paid for using
monetary gifts given by admirers. Visitors sometimes leave letters or pennies at the iron gate in
front of the grave—the latter because the coin bears the image of Abraham Lincoln, whom
Whitman wrote a well-known elegy for following his death in 1865.

10 of the Best Walt Whitman Poems:

1. ‘Song of Myself’.

2. ‘I Sing the Body Electric’.

3:I Hear America Singing’.

4: ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’

5. ‘O Captain! My Captain!’

6. ‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’.

7. ‘Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand’.

8. ‘O Me! O Life!

9. ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

10. ‘Pioneers! O Pioneers

Facts About Walt Whitman:

Whitman is a great self-promoter who refers to himself as the "American Bard at Last."

A bard is merely another way of saying someone is a great poet.

William Shakespeare is the Bard of English Literature.

Walt Whitman feels as if he is just as great as Shakespeare, perhaps even greater.

Although one of America's greatest self-promoters of that era, Walt Whitman was a conceited
man. Whitman sees himself as the voice of America. He claims to be a common man who has
the same feelings as all Americans. Whitman is the poet of everything American: the good, the
bad, the ugly, the cultured east, wild west, south, and the Eskimo in the canoe.

Whitman has a way of identifying with all Americans. Whitman sees himself in terms of others.
He sees himself as a representative of America. He sees himself as universal.

One can become universal by writing about himself.

When Walt Whitman sings the Song of Myself, he is singing the song of Americans.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter to Whitman in 1852. Emerson was embarrassed to find the
letter he had written to Whitman in Whitman’s book.

Walt Whitman was much unlike the other authors and poets of this genre, especially Emily
Dickinson

Resources:

Wikipedia

Poetryfoundation

Whitman archive

The guardian

His Death on Saturday Evening--His

Life and Literary Place.

Walt Whitman, the poet, died at a quarter before seven o’clock last Saturday evening, at his
home in Camden, N.J. He began to sink at 4:30 o’clock, and grew gradually weaker until the end,
which was peaceful. Mr. Whitman’s death came unexpectedly at last, although he had been
very low for several months. His funeral will take place on Wednesday at two o’clock.