1. Walt Whitman
*presentation adapted from Prentice Hall Literature: The American Experience

2. “America’s Poet”
“The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he absorbed it.” –Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass
Although his poetry was not as popular as he would have liked it to be during his lifetime, Whitman is currently recognized as one of America’s most gifted poets.
“Uncle Walt”

3. Whitman’s Career
Born on Long Island in 1819, raised in Brooklyn by a working class family
No formal education beyond age 11. Self-educated. He read Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Sir Walter Scott
1830 – 48 He worked many jobs: printing, editing, writing for local papers
Became editor of the Brooklyn Eagle when he was 27 years old
Fired in 1848 because of his outspoken disdain and opposition to slavery
Worked for a newspaper in New Orleans and travelled the country, noting the diversity of America’s geography and people.
1850—gives up journalism to exclusively write poetry grounded in Realism
1862 – 1873 Served as a volunteer nurse to wounded soldiers of the Revolutionary War
1865 Met his best friend Peter Doyle, a lifelong companion
Died in 1892 after suffering a stroke ten years earlier

4. Leaves of Grass Poetry anthology first published in 1855.
Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed”
However, poet John Greenleaf Whittier hated it so much and was so offended by its “indelicate passages” (Whitman’s phrase) that he he threw his copy of the book into the fireplace

5. Whitman and Emerson Admired Emerson, a Transcendentalist Philosopher
Strove to answer a call Emerson put out in his essay “Poet”
Sent Emerson his first copy of Leaves of Grass

6. Transcendentalism A philosophical and literature movement
Started by Emerson
Critics of:
Contemporary society for its unthinking conformity
Logic and materialism
Goals/Values:
Want individuals to find an original relation to the universe
Discover real truth through intuition, spirituality, and our relationship with the rest of the universe

7. Whitman’s Poetry
Whitman continually revised and expanded Leaves of Grass for the rest of his life
Criticized for breaking with traditional forms
It was his “evolving vision of the world”
Poetry focuses on:
Democracy
Equality
The “spiritual unity of all forms of life”—a form of pantheism
The “potential of the human spirit”
He had a “unique ability to absorb and comprehend everything he observed” (like Emerson’s “transparent eyeball”)

8. "Transparent eyeball" as illustrated by Christopher Pearse Cranch, ca
“There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
-Emerson, From “Nature”

9. Whitman’s Style and Techniques
STYLE- the manner in which a writer puts his or her thoughts into words
Free verse- verse that has irregular meter and line length
(Whitman is the first American poet to use free verse. It captured the rhythm of everyday, common speech)
Catalogs/lists- the piling up of images or concrete details
Parallelism- use of similar grammatical structures to create rhythm, provide structure, and emphasize ideas

10. Famous Poems A fan of Abraham Lincoln: Not a fan of the Civil War:
“O Captain! My Captain!”
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Not a fan of the Civil War:
“Beat! Beat! Drums!”
Other poems:
“Song of Myself”
“I Hear America Singing”
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

11. “O Captain! My Captain!”
April 9, 1865: Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Civil War
April 14, 1865: Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth during a performance at Ford’s Theater
1865: Walt Whitman writes “O Captain! My Captain!” after Lincoln’s death
extended metaphor- a sustained comparison in which part or all of a poem consists of a series of related metaphors