Looking At a LifeWalt Whitman

Biography• Born May 31st, 1819 on Long Island

• Born into a working class family

• Named after his father, Walter Whitman, Sr.

• His mother was Louisa Van Velsor

• Family of 9 children

• At 11 was done with school and got first job as an office boy for distinguished Brooklyn lawyers

• They gave him a subscription to a circulating library and this is where his largely self-taught methods began…

Biography“Always an autodidact, Whitman absorbed an eclectic but wide-ranging education through his visits to museums, his nonstop reading, and his penchant for engaging everyone he met in conversation and debate. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed highly structured, classical educations at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum of literature, theater, history, geography, music, and archeology out of the developing public resources of America's fastest growing city.” – From the Walt Whitman Archive

Biography• First career path was in the newspaper/printing business,

but a fire in the district demolished the industry in the city and changed his future job plans at the early age of 17

• Switched to being a school teacher

• Founded the weekly newspaper Long-Islander in 1938

• Taught until 1841 when he switched from his second career to third, that being a journalist

• Between 1840 and 1845 were said to be his best years in fiction, but during those years he still continued journalism

• When he became editor of the New Orleans Crescent, his eyes were opened to slavery and he founded the Brooklyn Freeman, a “free-soil” paper

Biography• On May 15, 1855 copyrighted his first edition of Leaves

of Grass, which he refined and published several more editions of – this is arguably his most well-known work

• The Civil War caused him to want to live a changed life

• Struggled to support himself financially (“starving writer”)

• Was a selfless man and spent any excess money (which included gifts from friends) to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He was also sending money to his widowed mom and his sick brother. Writers in America and in England sent him “purses” of money to help him manage 

Biography• Settled down in the early 1870s in Camden, New Jersey

after he originally came there to visit his dying mother at this brother’s house

• Suffered a stroke and could not leave

• After staying with his brother, the 1882 publishing of Leaves of Grass gave him enough money to buy a house in Camden which was a simple two-story clapboard house where he spent his last years

• He worked on another edition of Leaves of Grass and prepared his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy which was published in 1892.

• He died March 26, 1892 and was buried in a tomb he designed and built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery

Major Work

BooksLeaves of Grass (United States editions)

18551856186018671871-721881-821891-92

Drum-Taps (1865)Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865-66)Memoranda During the War (1876)Complete Prose Works (1892)

Major WorkEditions of his work published outside the United Sates, his poems first published in periodicals, his journalism, and his editorial work on the New York Aurora can be found at www.whitmanarchive.org/published/index.html

Characteristics of Whitman’s Work

"The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” – Walt Whitman

(written in the preface of Leaves of Grass (1855))

Characteristics of Whitman’s Work

The main reason I chose to study Whitman was because I had always regarded him as a very romantic writer. I was first introduced to his work in one of my favorite romance films, The Notebook, in which his works were recited and referenced by a man trying to get his wife to “remember” him. As I have learned, however, his life experiences also led him to write about things such as the Civil War and the fight for the common man, which he had dealt with first-hand. It is also Whitman’s lack of specific style, vast range of topics, and his rejection of the modern beliefs of his time that made me come to thoroughly respect him as a notable public figure and writer. These are the characteristics that I think most define Walt Whitman.

Characteristics of Whitman’s Work

It is hard to describe characteristics of Whitman’s work mostly due to the fact that he tended to break free from any sort of constraint or norm of his time, but I believe that the following quote from the Poetry Foundation sums up what most people consider the main characteristics of Whitman’s work:

In Leaves of Grass (1855), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in death.

Critical ResponseFrom Others

In many cases, Whitman was either denied publishing or had certain positions revoked because of his controversial writing

One such incident was the revoking of his position as editor of the Eagle, in which his belief that slavery should not be expanded into western territories was not agreed upon by the publisher, Isaac Van Anden, who sided with conservative pro-slavery Democrats.

Critical ResponseAnother similar account came when Whitman served as Clerk for the Department of the Interior. He was fired by the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan because he found Leaves of Grass offensive

These two cases were just a couple of the many difficulties Whitman faced because of his deviation from the norm. The criticism I have found on Whitman has not been on his writing style, but on his content, which now is regarded as brilliant and has earned him many honorary titles as an American writer

Critical ResponseThe Fowler brothers (Lorenzo and Orson), however, were two people who viewed Whitman’s work in a positive light. They were the distributors of his first edition of Leaves of Grass, they published the second anonymously, and put one of Whitman’s self-reviews in their magazine

Critical Response“Whitman published his own enthusiastic review of Leaves of Grass. Critics and readers alike, however, found both Whitman’s style and subject matter unnerving. According to The Longman Anthology of Poetry, ‘Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons:  this openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations.’ A poet who ‘abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns’ of his contemporaries, Whitman was ‘influenced by the long cadences and rhetorical strategies of Biblical poetry.’” – from the Poetry Foundation

Critical ResponseFrom Me

My admiration for Walt Whitman not only comes because of his romantic themes, but for his life stories that he incorporates so well into his writing. I think that one of the many things he has done so well is to please many different groups of people. Many, like me prior to this project, thought of him mainly as writer to the female audience, but he has so many genres I don’t think people realize

After reading “O Captain! My Captain!”, one of his more famous works, I am aware of the secret meanings he hides in many of his works. This particular poem is said to be about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and was written because of Whitman’s admiration for him. He satisfies not only my need to dig for deeper meaning when reading poetry, but my need for rhythm and rhyme

Critical Response…And I cannot end the Critical Response portion of this project without mentioning a poem in which a line is found in The Notebook: “Continuities”

I’m going to attempt to briefly lay out the key to a woman’s heart –A. Simplicity, like the first line “nothing is ever really lost,

or can be lost”

B. Heavy usage of old-timey words, such as ‘nor’ and ‘shall’, and

C. A rich description

That’s it! Ok, not totally, but we all love a good sappy poem, and it sure can’t hurt when you’re in the doghouse!

Influences on Whitman’s Work

Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible were said to have all influenced Walt Whitman’s work, but what I find more important than fellow writers were his experiences, as there were so many, each very different

Influences on the World

Walt Whitman influenced writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, as holds true for many notable figures, he influenced the world after he was already dead

According to the Walt Whitman Archive:

Whitman, America's most influential poet and one of the four or five most innovative and significant writers in United States history, is the most challenging of all American authors in terms of the textual difficulties his work presents. He left behind an enormous amount of written material, and his major life work, Leaves of Grass, went through six very different editions, each of which was issued in a number of formats, creating a book that is probably best studied as numerous distinct creations rather than as a single revised work. His many notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, and voluminous journalistic articles all offer key cultural and biographical contexts for his poetry. The Archive sets out to incorporate as much of this material as possible, drawing on the resources of libraries and collections from around the United States and around the world.

Influences on MeBy researching Walt Whitman, specifically reading various biographies, he seems like an exceptional, selfless man with a very large heart. From the tough criticism he saw during his time, to the praise he is no longer alive to hear now, I think that Whitman was ahead of his time, especially in his talent for romance and topics considered too risqué for his era. I admire the fact that he was largely self-taught and I admire his nonconformity as I can relate to feeling that I don’t have the same beliefs as those around me and perhaps belong in a different time.

ExtrasThe clip from the link below comes from the Walt Whitman archive and is thought to be his real voice. It is very scratchy and hard to hear, but regardless a unique thing to have from such a long time ago and from an era with such poor electronic capabilities:

http://www.whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/America.mp3

The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic site and Interpretive Center is another unique link:

http://www.waltwhitman.org/

Bibliography"Walt Whitman." - Poets.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July 2012.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126.

"Walt Whitman." : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July 2012.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/walt-whitman.

"The Walt Whitman Archive." The Walt Whitman Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July

2012. http://www.whitmanarchive.org/.

"Walt Whitman: The Americanization of Romanticism." Walt Whitman: The

Americanization of Romanticism. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July 2012.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/english/orals/Whitman.htm