Poet · 1819 – 1892
Walt Whitman
Key Takeaways
- Whitman pioneered free verse, breaking from rhyme and strict meter.
- His life's work, Leaves of Grass, he revised and expanded for decades.
- He celebrated democracy, the body, nature and the common American.
- He is considered a founding father of modern American poetry.
Walt Whitman wanted to write a poetry as big and free as America itself — and he did, casting off rhyme and meter for sweeping lines that still sound like the voice of a continent.
Leaves of Grass
Whitman poured his vision into a single book, Leaves of Grass, which he revised and enlarged across his whole life. Its centerpiece, “Song of Myself”, celebrates the body, the soul, democracy and the equality of all people in long, surging free verse. Answering Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call for a truly American poet, he printed the first edition himself.
Bard of democracy
The Civil War deepened him; he nursed wounded soldiers and mourned Abraham Lincoln in “O Captain! My Captain!” Where his contemporary Emily Dickinson worked in compression, this poet of the modern era worked in expansion — and together they founded modern American poetry.
Influence
Whitman freed poetry from traditional form and gave America an expansive, democratic voice, shaping poets across the world for generations.
Legacy
Revered as the bard of American democracy, he stands with Emily Dickinson at the origin of the nation's modern poetry.
Major Works
- Leaves of Grass
- Song of Myself
- O Captain! My Captain!
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Walt Whitman?
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, author of Leaves of Grass, who pioneered free verse and is considered a founding father of modern American poetry.
What is Leaves of Grass?
Leaves of Grass is Whitman's lifelong collection of free-verse poetry celebrating democracy, nature, the self and the American people, which he revised and expanded throughout his life.
Citations & Sources
People Like Walt
Emily Dickinson
80Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived in near-seclusion and published almost nothing in her lifetime, yet whose nearly 1,800 original, compressed poems made her, after her death, one of the most important poets in the English language.
Why His contemporary and the other founding giant of modern American poetry.
Abraham Lincoln
92Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, who led the nation through its Civil War, preserved the Union, and abolished slavery before his assassination in 1865.
Why The president Whitman revered and mourned in 'O Captain! My Captain!'.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
80Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement and, through works such as "Self-Reliance" and "Nature", shaped American thought and called a new national literature into being.
Why The thinker whose call for an American poet Whitman answered with Leaves of Grass.
Edgar Allan Poe
81Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and poet, a master of the macabre, who invented the detective story, helped shape the modern short story and science fiction, and gave the world haunting tales and poems such as "The Raven".
Why Also a writer & poet · Active in the same era
Ernest Hemingway
82Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and short-story writer whose spare, understated prose style revolutionized 20th-century fiction, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for works such as The Old Man and the Sea.
Why Also a writer & journalist · Active in the same era
Herman Melville
80Herman Melville was an American novelist and poet whose Moby-Dick, neglected in his lifetime, is now regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and a towering achievement of American literature.
Why Also a writer & poet · Active in the same era