Walt whitman biography civil war influence
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How the American Civil War Gave Walt Whitman a Call to Action
Walt Whitman did all he could to advance the fortunes of his own book, Leaves of Grass. He reviewed it himself, not once but three times.
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“An American Bard at last,” he crowed. Whitman, the New Yorker, was commercially minded. Quickly, he got to work on a new edition. He wrote more poems and published them a year later in the edition of 1856. This volume fryst vatten short and squat, a quarto, not an expansive folio like the 1855. It looks to be loaded with compact muscle.
Whitman did something memorable to the 1856 volume, which he published himself, something that Emerson probably never fully forgave him for. He took a line from the moving letter that Emerson sent him to celebrate the first edition of Leaves and embossed it in gold on the spine of the book.
“I greet you at the beginning of a great career, R. W. Emerson,” the binding says. Whitman neglected to ask Emerso
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Walt Whitman
American poet, essayist and reporter (1819–1892)
For other uses, see Walt Whitman (disambiguation).
Walt Whitman | |
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Whitman in 1887 | |
| Born | Walter Whitman Jr. (1819-05-31)May 31, 1819 Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 26, 1892(1892-03-26) (aged 72) Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Resting place | Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey, U.S. 39°55′38″N75°05′37″W / 39.9271816°N 75.0937119°W / 39.9271816; -75.0937119 |
| Occupations | |
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse.[1] His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt
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Kenneth M. Price
Walt Whitman famously described his visits to thousands of wounded Civil War soldiers in Memoranda during the War, a volume with a largely ignored subtitle: "Written on the Spot in 1863–65." I want to highlight that subtitle and its emphasis on space and time—its geotemporal specificity—to ask: what did it mean to have a writer of Whitman's sensibilities thrust into the nation's capital city in the final three years of the war when it had become a city of hospitals? Washington treated more wounded soldiers than any other city, and Whitman, a visitor to dozens of hospitals, gravitated toward the epicenter of suffering. He spent most of his time at Armory Square Hospital, which hosted the worst cases and had the highest death rate. At a time of unprecedented maiming and killing, Whitman engaged in the work of healing. Leaves of Grass, his poetic masterpiece, intertwined the physical bodies of men and women and the symbolic body of the nation and saw