Leaves of Grass (1855)
His life's work, self-published with twelve untitled poems and repeatedly enlarged until 1891–92
Literature · Poets
Walt Whitman
1819–1892 · American
American Romanticism; free verse
Walt Whitman was the great poet of American democracy and the pioneer of free verse. He spent his life expanding and revising a single book, Leaves of Grass, first self-published in 1855, whose long, catalogue-like lines celebrated the self, the body and the common people. His Civil War poems include two elegies for Abraham Lincoln.
How to spot them
- ▸Leaves of Grass, revised through many editions from 1855 to the 'deathbed edition' of 1891–92
- ▸"I celebrate myself"; "I contain multitudes"; "barbaric yawp" (Song of Myself)
- ▸"O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" for Lincoln
- ▸Civil War hospital volunteer in Washington; the 'Good Gray Poet' of Camden, New Jersey
Key works
Song of Myself (1855)
The long opening poem of Leaves of Grass, a celebration of the self as representative of all people
I Sing the Body Electric (1855)
Frank celebration of the human body, male and female
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1856)
Meditation linking the poet with future passengers on the East River ferry
Drum-Taps (1865)
Collection of American Civil War poems
O Captain! My Captain! (1865)
Rhymed elegy for Lincoln as the captain who dies as the ship of state reaches port
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1865)
Longer elegy for Lincoln built on the symbols of lilac, star and thrush
Specimen Days (1882)
Prose memoir including his Civil War diary notes
Key ideas
- Free verse built on long, rhythmic lines, repetition and catalogues, influenced by the King James Bible
- A democratic poetics: the poet speaks for and embraces every kind of American
- Celebration of the body and sexuality, scandalous in its day
Quick-fire facts
- •Born at West Hills on Long Island, New York; worked as a printer, teacher and journalist, including editing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
- •Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to him in 1855: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career"
- •Nursed wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals during the Civil War after searching for his wounded brother George
- •Dismissed from his job at the Department of the Interior in 1865 because its secretary considered Leaves of Grass indecent
- •Spent his last years in Camden, New Jersey, where he died and is buried in a tomb he designed
- •"O Captain! My Captain!" is famously recited in the film Dead Poets Society (1989)
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Sources
- Poetry Foundation — Walt Whitman