Walter "Walt" Whitman was born May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Virginia to Walter Sr and Louisa Van Velsor and was one of several children. Because of his father's poor investments and the family's constant moving from house to house, Walt had a restless and difficult childhood. At 11, he dropped out of school and began working to help the family. His first job taught him about the printing press, and he soon became immersed in the literary world.
At 36, Walt self-published Leaves of Grass, his first (and most notable) collection of poetry inspired by his travels across America, as well as his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson himself called Leaves of Grass "The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."
Despite that, Walt received little public acclaim for his poems due to the poems' openness about sex, his self-presentation as a working man, and a penchant for writing outside the established poetic styles of his peers. However, he found fame in England, where the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne celebrated his works.
During the civil war, Walt published Drum-Taps, a sequence of poems about the war known as the "finest war poetry written by an American." He also penned a Civil War autobiography called Memoranda During the War, which covered his life during the war, but couldn't get it published until 1876.
Unfortunately, Walt suffered a paralytic stroke that left him bedridden in 1873, forcing him to move in with his brother, who owned a home in Camden, New Jersey. He lived there until 1883 when he bought his own house and was taken care of by his tenants.
Walt Whitman died on March 26, 1892, at 73. Before he did, he prepared one last edition of Leaves of Grass, a version nicknamed the Deathbed Edition, and he finally called it complete with the words: "L. of G., at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."
Whitman is buried at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, and his home is now known as the Walt Whitman house and museum.
To learn more about this esteemed poet, visit the link above or check out his Wikipedia page!
Poems in this episode are As I Pond'erd in Silence, Poets to Come, On the Difficulties of Appearances, Gods, and O Captain! My Captain!
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