Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Proclaimed the "greatest of all American poets" by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death, he is viewed as the first urban poet. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. His works have even been translated into more than 25 languages. Whitman is among the most influential and controversial poets in the American canon. His work has been described as a "rude shock" and "the most audacious and debatable contribution yet made to American literature." He largely abandoned the metrical structures of European poetry for an expansionist freestyle verse—"irregular" but "beautifully rhythmic"— which represented his philosophical view that America was destined to reinvent the world as emancipator and liberator of the human spirit. As Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass (By Blue Ontario's Shore), "Rhymes and rhymers pass away...America justifies itself, give it time..."

Leaves of Grass

In 1855 Whitman took it upon himself to publish his first edition of Leaves of Grass. The next year he released his second edition of Leaves of Grass in 1865 with around 20 new poems. In 1860 Whitman released his third edition of Leaves of Grass, which was the first major revision and edition to his work. Whitman in 1870 added “Drum-Taps”, “Sequel to Drum-Taps”, and “Songs before Parting” to Leaves of Grass, which made this edition the first to properly address the Civil War through Whitman’s eyes. In 1881 Whitman was able to purchase his final home because of the revenue generated from the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass. The final edition, called the deathbed edition, was released in 1892, bringing Leaves of Grass to its current state.

The public response to Leaves of Grass was initially mixed. The first notice, probably written by Charles A. Dana, in the New York Daily Tribune, complained of "a somewhat too oracular strain" and of language that is "too frequently reckless and indecent ... quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society." Nevertheless, "no impartial reader can fail to be impressed with the vigor and faint beauty of isolated portions." In short, "the taste of not overdainty fastidiousness will discern much of the essential spirit of poetry beneath an uncouth and grotesque embodiment." Charles Eliot Norton, writing in Putnam's Monthly, was not at all impressed with this "curious and lawless collection of poems ... [which] are neither in rhyme or blank verse, but in a sort of excited prose broken into lines without any attempt at measure or regularity, and, as many readers will perhaps think, without any idea of sense or reason." Leaves of Grass is ultimately dismissed as a "superficial yet profound ... preposterous yet somehow fascinating ... mixture of Yankee Transcendentalism and New York rowdyism." The debate was beginning.

Song of Myself

Song of Myself was originally published in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass in which it was the first of twelve poems. At the time this poem was untitled, but in 1856 Whitman titled this work “Poem of Walt Whitman: An American”. “Poem of Walt Whitman: An American” was divided into 52 numbered sections in 1867, which is how the poem is organized to this day. Then in 1881 Whitman decided to give the poem its final name: Song of Myself.

“Song of Mysel is a history of the poet’s movement from loafing individual to active spirit. But the poet’s movement is paralleled by the reader’s movement from “assuming” to “resuming” and the poet controls both movements in the poem with the catalogues.” .

Drum-Taps

In May 1865 Walt began printing his Civil War literature entitled, Drum-Taps. Shortly after beginning his printing of Drum-Taps Whitman pauses, and begins writing the sequel in order to add in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and O Captain! My Captain! in remembrance of President Lincoln, whom Whitman was very fond of. In late 1865 Whitman concluded his work on Drum-Taps and Sequel, and began printing them for distribution.

Drum-Taps represents yet another shift in Whitman's poetry. In the first two editions, the focus was on the self and its transcendent powers; in the third edition--with such seashore poems as "Out of the Cradle" and "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life"--the poet exchanged the representative ego for a recognition that life has its human limits that the poet must also celebrate, somehow exorcising the bad from the good. In his third phase, he shifts the attention from the self of the first editions to the Christ figure in others. This is brought to its richest fruition in Whitman's elegy for Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." What is remarkable about the poem is its revitalization of Whitman's original powers as a poet.

Memoranda During the War

In 1875, Whitman copyrighted his 11 articles written for the New York Times and the New York Weekly Graphic, along with some more material, which he called “Memoranda During the War”. In later years he released the work, only one thousand copies at first, from a private printing. “Memoranda During the War” was not meant to be a detailed description of the actions of the Civil War, but rather a spotlight on the men fighting this monumental battle. This topic touched close to home with Whitman because his brother George was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, which was the catalyst to Whitman’s involvement.

“DURING the Union War I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the Army, both on the field and in the Hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted…” . This is a small exerpt from the beginning of “Memoranda During the War”.

Influence on later poets

Walt Whitman's influence on contemporary North American poetry is so enormous that it has been said that American poetry divides into two camps: that which naturally flows from Whitman and that which consciously strives to accept it. Whitman's great talents presented a complex paradox for the modernist poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who recognized Whitman's value but feared the implications of his influence.

During the height of modernism, Whitman continued to present "a problem" until he was rescued by such influential poets as William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane. Later, Allen Ginsberg and the beat poets would become the most vociferous champions of Whitman's expansive, abundant, humanistic America. Ginsberg begins his famous poem "Supermarket in California" from Howl and Other Poems with a reference to Whitman. The hand of Whitman can be seen working in such diverse 20th-century poets as John Berryman, Galway Kinnell, Langston Hughes, Philip Levine, Kenneth Koch, James Wright, Joy Harjo, William Carlos Williams, Mary Oliver, Bob Dylan, Jerry Wemple and June Jordan, to name only a few.

Whitman was also revered by international poets ranging from Pablo Neruda to Rimbaud to Federico García Lorca to Fernando Pessoa.

Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom considers Walt Whitman to be among the five most important U.S. poets of all time (along with Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Robert Frost).

Whitman was also a huge influence on the English novelist and poet D. H. Lawrence.