K a i l e y Sl us s e r
Wa lt W h i t m a n ’s
Period 4
L EAVES OF G RASS
Important Dates
1819: May 31st, Walter
Whitman Jr. was Born
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1855: First edition of Leaves 
of Grass*
1856: Second edition of
LOG
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1860: Third edition of LOG
1861: Civil War Begins
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1866: Good Grey Poet by
William D. O’Connor published; Novel about Whit- 
man
1867: Fourth edition of
LOG
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1870: Fifth edition of LOG 
1873: Whitman suffers paralytic stroke in January followed by mother’s death
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1876: Sixth edition of LOG
1882: Seventh edition of
LOG
1888: Whitman suffers severe paralytic stroke
1889: Eighth edition of
LOG in honor of his 70th
birthday
1891: Ninth/Deathbed edition of LOG
1982: March 26, Whitman
dies
*Abbreviated as LOG
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Born in Long, Island, NY
BIOGRAPHY
Stopped going to public school at young
age to begin work
Most of his education was from what he
taught himself by borrowing books and
going to museums
Around age 12, he became a messenger
boy, exposing him to printing and newspaper trades as well as knowledge of the
urban American life
Around age 17, with only 5 years of
schooling, he became a school teacher
but then went on to quit to go back to the
newspaper business
Fairly successful newspaper editor in the
1840s
When traveling down south to edit a newspaper in New Orleans the most lasting
impression of that was the inhumanity of
the slave auctions
Very active in politics and supported the
Free Soil Party, which was know for its
fight against slavery extension to the
western territories
First 2 years of the Civil War, Whitman
remained in New York to write and discuss politics with other artists and writers
Two of his brother served in the Civil War
and when one was injured at the Battle of
Fredericksburg, Walt went to the Virginia
battlefield to help and serve as a nurse
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Through deep admiration, he wrote several poems in honor of President Lincoln
after the assassination
In 1866, William Douglass O'Connor wrote
The Good Grey Poet which praises Whitman’s service in the war, chastising the
government, and defend him against any
charges of immortality
After the war, he was believed to have
been involved in a complex and intimate
relationship with Peter Doyle, a former
Confederate soldier
He suffered a stroke in 1873 and moved
to Camden, NJ to be with his dying mother
and brother George
While in Camden he received visits from
famous writers, including Oscar Wilde
He used his savings to build a tomb large
enough for his parents and siblings so
that when he died he could reunite his
dispersed family under one roof
He died March 26, 1892
Thousands of
Americans came
to his house in
Camden to pay
final respects
most of these
visitors were the
average citizens
of America
WHITMAN’S WORKS
Leaves of Grass
Other Major Works
1855 1856
1860 1867
1870 1876
1882 1889
1891 (Deathbed Edition)
After All, Not to Create Only (1871)
Democratic Vistas (1871)
Memoranda During the War (1876)
Specimen Days (1883)
November Boughs (1888)
P age 2
K a i l e y Sl us s e r
WHITMAN
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The genre of
Leaves of Grass is
Poetry, but
within that it is
considered free
verse poetry.
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Prior to the 1840s Whitman
wrote normal rhymed poetry
By 1850 he began to write in
free verse, which has no set
rhythm or rhyme
A majority of Leaves of Grass is
written in free verse and some
poems even contain long lists
He would often incorporate
sights and sounds of his native
country, as well as the unity of
the country
THE
WRITER
Themes Found in
Leaves of Grass
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Democracy
The Body
Equality
Death and Rebirth
Middle Class America
Self Song
Celebration
United States
CRITICISM
“An American
bard at last!...”
-Anonymous
(Later discovered as
Whitman himself)
“I greet you at
the beginning
of a great
career.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He is America. His crudity is an exceeding great stench, but
it is America. He is the hollow place in the rock that echo,
with his tine. He does ‘chant the crucial stage’ and he is the
‘voice triumphant.’ He is disgusting. He is an exceedingly
nauseating pill, but he accomplishes his mission.” - Ezra
Pound (1909)
“On the whole it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land put
together are equal to it for preaching. We ought to rejoice
greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little
more than human. You can’t confound him with the other
inhabitants of Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read him. He is awfully good.” - Henry David
Thoreau (1856)
“Nothing in the second half of the nineteenth century or in
our now almost completed century matches Whitman’s
work in direct power and sublimity, except perhaps for Dickinson.” - Harold Bloom, The Western Canon
L e a v e s o f Gr a s s
P age 3
“The greatest modern poet! Whitman, at his best, is purely himself. His cerse
springs sheer from the spontaneous sources of his being. Hence its lovely,
lovely form and rhythm: at the best. It is sheer, perfect. Human spontaneity,
spontaneous as a nightingale throbbing, but still controlled, the highest loveliness of human spontaneity, undecorated, unclothed.” - D.H. Lawrence (1921)
“ ‘Leaves of Grass’ indeed (I cannot too often reiterate) has mainly been to
the outcropping of my own emotional and other personal nature—an attempt
from first to last, to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of
the Nineteenth Century, in America) freely, fully and truly on record. I could
not find any similar personal record in current literature that satisfied me…
No one will get st my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward art or
aestheticism.” - Walt Whitman, A Backward Glance
WHY
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IS
L E AV E S
OF
GRASS A CLASSIC?
Written in not just the voice of a poet, but in the voice of a
man and also the voice of America
Many of the poems include the reality of what was going
on in the United States at the time, which went against the
typical “fantasy” topic and theme of “normal” poetry
Written in free verse which was a new style
Written to include the middle working class
NOTES:
SAMPLES OF WHITMAN’S WORK
Song of Myself (Excerpt)
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
O Captain! My Captain!
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
Nature without check with original energy.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
I Sing the Body Electric (Excerpt)
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth
them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to
them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the
charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own
bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they
who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the
soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
O captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.