WALT WHITMAN

A PHOTO

SYNOPSIS

BASIC INFORMATION

• Born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York
• Wrote poetry that aimed to express the potential America had to provide liberation for its citizens.
• Died on March 6, 1892 in Camden New Jersey

EARLY LIFE

CHILDHOOD

• Father was a carpenter, farmer, and real estate speculator
• Mother was a aficionado for literary art.
• One of 8 children
• Later lived in Brooklyn
• Pulled out of school to begin working for income
• started to work as an office boy for a Brooklyn-based attorney team and eventually found employment in a printing business

THE ROOTS OF WRITING

JOURNALISM

• Started to teach, but disliked it
• Quit in 1841 and started in the field of news coverage
• In 1838 he had begun a journal called the Long Islander which immediately collapsed (however the distribution would in the long run would be renewed) and later came back to New York City
• In 1846 he became the supervisor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a daily paper
• Whitman turned out to be an outstanding columnist with an arrangement of suppositions that didn't generally adjust to his supervisors
• Whitman returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and began another daily journal named the Brooklyn Freeman.
• Journal spoke about the events and heat rising in the country that led up to th

LEAVES OF GRASS

LEAVES OF GRASS

• Written in Spring of 1855
• 795 Copies were sent
• Was redone in 1866
• Entranced by this newcomer to the world of literature, scholars Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott met Whitman.
• Alcott depicted Whitman' as ''Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr, and rank" while his voice was heard as "deep, sharp, tender sometimes and almost melting."
• Leaves of Grass neglected to increase much business footing.

THE CIVIL WAR

WHITMAN AND THE CIVIL WAR

• Whitman's, brother fought in the Civil War, and got injured- which caused Whitman to write about the suffering that brought him.
• Whitman journeyed to find his brother who was recovering from a wound.
• Whitman moved to Washington, D.C. and worked to care for the tens and thousands of casualties during the war.
• Seeing all the men injured and die caused him to grasp a thicker sense of what the war might have felt like.
• Three years later, Whitman published a new collection called "Drum-Taps", which represented what the Civil War meant for people. These poems include: "Beat! Beat! Drums!" and "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night." A followup edition, was released later that same year and featured new poems like, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", which was Whitman's elegy to President Abraham Lincoln.

CONTRIBUTIONS

LEGACY

• Walt Whitman was an important American poet who gave insight to the different events and happenings in his time.
• He gives Americans a sense of American pride by writing poems that have a pride feel to them.
• In "O Captain, My Captain", Whitman expresses the loss of men. He also explains the wartime. In "I Hear America Singing", he describes the meaning of the American Dream and the hard work it requires to get to that level.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Walt Whitman was an important poet who contributed abundantly to American heritage. He explained many things that we have now in our world in 2016 like women's rights, and humanism. He contributed to what we know about our history, and gave informative insights to the events that occurred during his time.

.

THANK YOU❤️