Portrait of Whitman, June, 1887

R. Pearsall Smith, photographer. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection.

Born in Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman (1819–1892) moved at the age of four with his family to Brooklyn. Educated in public schools and later as a printer’s apprentice, Whitman earned his living at several occupations, including teacher, printer, reporter, and editor. In 1855, he published Leaves of Grass. The volume did not sell well, and many of those who read or reviewed it found it distasteful in content and unpoetic in form. Whitman, however, found a champion in Ralph Waldo Emerson and a receptive audience abroad. During the Civil War, Whitman volunteered as a nurse for the Union cause and wrote America’s most important and moving poems concerning the conflict, among them “Cavalry Crossing a Ford.” In 1873, he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered, followed by a deep depression which descended after the death of his mother. By the end of his life, Whitman had become a legend. Leaves of Grass, issued in revised and augmented editions every few years throughout Whitman’s life, marks a profound contribution to the liberation of American poetry. Experimenting with rhythms, Whitman freed his poetry from metric regularity while writing with extraordinary frankness about himself. Both practices rendered his poems very different from the popular genteel poetry of his day. “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world,” he wrote in “Song of Myself,” and he seemed to challenge other poets to do the same.