Walt Whitman Essay
Walt Whitman: Poet of the American Paradox
Walt Whitman is generally regarded as one of America’s most important and influential nineteenth century poets. Whitman’s diverse life included becoming a printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and editor. All of which added to his love of literature and the English language as a whole. Some of his major works, including Leaves of Grass, were inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walt Whitman showcased the issues that plagued America during the 19th century by writing poetry about social problems such as the death of Abraham Lincoln is his poem, “O Captain! My Captain!”. Unlike other poets before him, he was the quintessential American poet by giving America a style of poetry it could call its own. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in Long Island. He was the second of nine children, and having a carpenter as a father who “was a carpenter who later speculated unsuccessfully in real estate” (Aubrey 1), Whitman grew up in poverty in urban Brooklyn since his family moved there in 1823. Whitman began to work at the age of 11, “as an office boy in a law office” (Walt-Gale 1). When Whitman began to study printers trade while working at the local printing shop at 12 years old, he developed a love for reading, writing, and the written word. Throughout his childhood, Whitman moved around Brooklyn with his family and often visited his grandparents in Long Island, before permanently relocating their with this family in 1834. As Folsom and Price had stated in their essay Walt Whitman, in Long Island, “his desire to be a poet arose in that landscape” and “during those visits he developed his lifelong love of the Long Island shore, sensing the mystery of that territory where water meets land, fluid melds with solid” (Aubrey 1). This appreciation for the natural world and nature as a whole could be the basis for his transcendentalist views. Whitman
Walt Whitman is generally regarded as one of America’s most important and influential nineteenth century poets. Whitman’s diverse life included becoming a printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and editor. All of which added to his love of literature and the English language as a whole. Some of his major works, including Leaves of Grass, were inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walt Whitman showcased the issues that plagued America during the 19th century by writing poetry about social problems such as the death of Abraham Lincoln is his poem, “O Captain! My Captain!”. Unlike other poets before him, he was the quintessential American poet by giving America a style of poetry it could call its own. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in Long Island. He was the second of nine children, and having a carpenter as a father who “was a carpenter who later speculated unsuccessfully in real estate” (Aubrey 1), Whitman grew up in poverty in urban Brooklyn since his family moved there in 1823. Whitman began to work at the age of 11, “as an office boy in a law office” (Walt-Gale 1). When Whitman began to study printers trade while working at the local printing shop at 12 years old, he developed a love for reading, writing, and the written word. Throughout his childhood, Whitman moved around Brooklyn with his family and often visited his grandparents in Long Island, before permanently relocating their with this family in 1834. As Folsom and Price had stated in their essay Walt Whitman, in Long Island, “his desire to be a poet arose in that landscape” and “during those visits he developed his lifelong love of the Long Island shore, sensing the mystery of that territory where water meets land, fluid melds with solid” (Aubrey 1). This appreciation for the natural world and nature as a whole could be the basis for his transcendentalist views. Whitman