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Biography of Walt WhitmanName: Walt WhitmanBirth Date: May 31, 1819 Death Date: March 26, 1892 Place of Birth: West Hills, New York, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: poet Walt Whitman Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is generally considered to be the most important American poet of the 19th century. He wrote in free verse, relying heavily on the rhythms of native American speech.In all, over a 37-year period, Walt Whitman published nine separate editions of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass. The final, 1892 edition, is the one familiar to readers today. He has strongly influenced the direction of 20th-century American poets, especially Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and, most recently, Allen Ginsberg and other "beat" poets.Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Huntington town, Long Island, the second of nine children. His family soon moved to Brooklyn, where he attended school for a few years. By 1830 his formal education was over, and for the next five years he learned the printing trade. For about five years, beginning in 1836, he taught school, on Long Island; during this time he also …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Arvin's study, Whitman (1938; repr. 1969).The most comprehensive treatment of Whitman's thought and literary techniques is Gay Wilson Allen, Walt Whitman Handbook (1946). Allen's A Reader's Guide to Walt Whitman (1970) is a balanced analytical introduction to Whitman's thought. A stimulating psychological study is Edwin Haviland Miller, Walt Whitman's Poetry: A Psychological Journey (1968). Other sound studies include Frederik Schyberg, Walt Whitman (1933; trans. 1951); James E. Miller, Jr., A Critical Guide to Leaves of Grass (1957); Roger Asselineau, The Evolution of Walt Whitman (trans., 2 vols., 1960-1962); and V. K. Charl, Whitman in the Light of Vedantic Mysticism (1964). See also Joseph Beaver, Walt Whitman: Poet of Science (1951), and Richard Chase, Walt Whitman Reconsidered (1955). F. O. Matthiessen's study of the mid-19th-century literary milieu, American Renaissance (1941), includes a sensitive account of Whitman's "Language Experiment." Recommended for general background are Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry (1961), and Hyatt H. Waggoner, American Poets from the Puritans to the Present (1968). |