Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist, born on 31 May 1819 in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He grew up in Brooklyn, left school young and worked as a printer, teacher and newspaper editor before turning to poetry. In 1855 he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a book he revised and expanded throughout his life. Its long, unrhymed lines, its frank celebration of the body and its embrace of ordinary people broke sharply with the polite verse of his day. During the Civil War he cared for wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals, an experience that shaped his later work. He also wrote prose about democracy, language and his own life. He spent his last years in Camden, New Jersey, and died on 26 March 1892. Whitman is often seen as a founding voice of modern American poetry, and his open, generous style has influenced poets around the world.