Walt Whitman

Walter Whitman (/ˈhwɪtmən/; May 31, 1819 – March 26,

1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A
Walt Whitman
humanist, he was a part of the transition between
transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his
works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the
American canon, often called the father of free verse.[1] His
work was controversial in its time, particularly his 1855 poetry
collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene
for its overt sensuality. Whitman's own life came under
scrutiny for his presumed homosexuality.

Born in Huntington on Long Island, as a child and through

much of his career he resided in Brooklyn. At age 11, he left
formal schooling to go to work. Later, Whitman worked as a
journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major
poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855
with his own money and became well known. The work was Whitman in 1887
an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an
Born Walter Whitman
American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until
his death in 1892. During the American Civil War, he went to May 31, 1819
Washington, D.C. and worked in hospitals caring for the West Hills, New York,
wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. U.S.
On the death of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly Died March 26, 1892
admired, he wrote his well known poems, "O Captain! My (aged 72)
Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", Camden, New Jersey,
and gave a series of lectures. After a stroke towards the end of U.S.
his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his Occupation Poet · essayist ·
health further declined. When he died at age 72, his funeral journalist
was a public event.[2][3] Signature

Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Mary Whitall

Smith Costelloe argued: "You cannot really understand
America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass ... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,'
as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him."[4] Modernist poet Ezra
Pound called Whitman "America's poet ... He is America."[5]

Contents
Life and work
Early life
Early career
Leaves of Grass
Civil War years
Health decline and death
Writing
Poetic theory
Lifestyle and beliefs
Alcohol
Religion
Sexuality
Sunbathing and swimming
Shakespeare authorship
Slavery
Nationalism
Legacy and influence
American poets
Latin American poets
European authors
Film and television
Music and audio recordings
Namesake recognition
Works
See also
References
Sources
External links
Archives
Exhibitions
Historic sites
Other external links

Life and work

Early life

Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, to parents
with interests in Quaker thought, Walter (1789–1855) and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795–1873). The
second of nine children,[6] he was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father.[7]
Walter Whitman Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George
Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age
of six months. The couple's sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward.[7] At age four, Whitman moved
with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments.[8]
Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult
economic status.[9] One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed
on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.[10]
At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling.[11] He then sought employment for further income for
his family; he was an office boy for two lawyers and later was an apprentice and printer's devil for the
weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements.[12] There, Whitman learned
about the printing press and typesetting.[13] He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for
occasional issues.[14] Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the
corpse of the Quaker minister Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head.[15] Clements left the Patriot
shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy.[16]

Early career

The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus

Worthington, in Brooklyn.[17] His family moved back to West Hills in the
spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden
Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly newspaper the Long-Island
Star.[17] While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patron of the local
library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater
performances,[18] and anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in
the New-York Mirror.[19] At age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star
and Brooklyn.[20] He moved to New York City to work as a
compositor[21] though, in later years, Whitman could not remember
where.[22] He attempted to find further work but had difficulty, in part due
to a severe fire in the printing and publishing district,[22] and in part due to
Whitman at age 28
a general collapse in the economy leading up to the Panic of 1837.[23] In
May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long
Island.[24] Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring
of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher.[25]

After his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York, to found his own newspaper,
the Long-Islander. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home
delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12,
1839.[26] There are no known surviving copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman.[27] By the
summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens, with the Long Island Democrat, edited
by James J. Brenton.[26] He left shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter of
1840 to the spring of 1841.[28] One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of Whitman's being chased away from
a teaching job in Southold, New York, in 1840. After a local preacher called him a "Sodomite", Whitman
was allegedly tarred and feathered. Biographer Justin Kaplan notes that the story is likely untrue, because
Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter.[29] Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a
"myth".[30] During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—
From the Desk of a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In
these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career.[31]

Whitman moved to New York City in May, initially working a low-level job at the New World, working
under Park Benjamin Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold.[32] He continued working for short periods of time
for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle.[33] While working for the latter institution, many of his publications were in the area of
music criticism, and it is during this time that he became a devoted lover of Italian opera through reviewing
performances of works by Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. This new interest had an impact on his writing in
free verse. He later said, "But for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass".[34]
Throughout the 1840s he contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals,[35] including
Brother Jonathan magazine edited by John Neal.[36] Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in
1848 after siding with the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's
owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "Hunker", wing of the party.[37] Whitman
was a delegate to the 1848 founding convention of the Free Soil Party, which was concerned about the
threat slavery would pose to free white labor and northern businessmen moving into the newly colonised
western territories. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison derided the party philosophy as "white
manism".[38]

In 1852, he serialized a novel titled Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography: A Story of
New York at the Present Time in which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters in six installments
of New York's The Sunday Dispatch.[39] In 1858, Whitman published a 47,000 word series called Manly
Health and Training under the pen name Mose Velsor.[40][41] Apparently he drew the name Velsor from
Van Velsor, his mother's family name.[42] This self-help guide recommends beards, nude sunbathing,
comfortable shoes, bathing daily in cold water, eating meat almost exclusively, plenty of fresh air, and
getting up early each morning. Present-day writers have called Manly Health and Training "quirky",[43]
"so over the top",[44] "a pseudoscientific tract",[45] and "wacky".[40]

Leaves of Grass

Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a
poet.[46] He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes
of the period.[47] As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass,[48] a collection
of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death.[49] Whitman intended to write a
distinctly American epic[50] and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible.[51] At the end of June
1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George
"didn't think it worth reading".[52]

Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass
himself[52] and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from
commercial jobs.[53] A total of 795 copies were printed.[54] No name is
given as author; instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done
by Samuel Hollyer,[55] but 500 lines into the body of the text he calls
himself "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or
women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest".[56] The
inaugural volume of poetry was preceded by a prose preface of 827 lines.
The succeeding untitled twelve poems totaled 2315 lines—1336 lines
belonging to the first untitled poem, later called "Song of Myself". The
book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a
Walt Whitman, age 35, from flattering five-page letter to Whitman and spoke highly of the book to
the frontispiece to Leaves of friends.[57] The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and
Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, stirred up significant interest,[58] in part due to Emerson's approval,[59] but
N.Y., steel engraving by was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the
Samuel Hollyer from a lost poetry.[60] Geologist Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book
daguerreotype by Gabriel "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass".[61]
Harrison
Whitman embossed a quote from Emerson's letter, "I greet you at the
beginning of a great career", in gold leaf on the spine of the second edition,
effectively inventing the modern book blurb. Laura Dassow Walls,
Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, wrote, "In one stroke, Whitman had given birth to
the modern cover blurb, quite without Emerson's permission."[62]
On July 11, 1855, a few days after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of
65.[63] In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing more
on the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the
publisher almost did not release it.[64] In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems,[65] in
August 1856.[66] Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860,[67] again in 1867, and several more
times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to
visit Whitman, including Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.[68]

During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced to work
as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857.[69] As an editor, he
oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials.[70] He left the job in 1859,
though it is unclear whether he was fired or chose to leave.[71] Whitman, who typically kept detailed
notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.[72]

Civil War years

As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his

poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the
North.[73] Whitman's brother George had joined the Union army
and began sending Whitman several vividly detailed letters of the
battle front.[74] On December 16, 1862, a listing of fallen and
wounded soldiers in the New-York Tribune included "First
Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a
reference to his brother George.[75] He made his way south
immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen on the
way.[76] "Walking all day and night, unable to ride, trying to get
information, trying to get access to big people", Whitman later
wrote,[77] he eventually found George alive, with only a superficial
wound on his cheek.[75] Whitman, profoundly affected by seeing
the wounded soldiers and the heaps of their amputated limbs, left
for Washington on December 28, 1862, with the intention of never Whitman as photographed by
returning to New York.[76] Mathew Brady

In Washington, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped

him obtain part-time work in the army paymaster's office, leaving time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse
in the army hospitals.[78] He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in
a New York newspaper in 1863[79] and, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War.[80]
He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for help in obtaining a government post.[76] Another friend,
John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the
Treasury, hoping he would grant Whitman a position in that department. Chase, however, did not want to
hire the author of such a disreputable book as Leaves of Grass.[81]

The Whitman family had a difficult end to 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was
captured by Confederates in Virginia,[82] and another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis
compounded by alcoholism on December 3.[83] That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the
Kings County Lunatic Asylum.[84] Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he finally got a better-
paying government post as a low-grade clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the
Interior, thanks to his friend William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist and an editor at
The Saturday Evening Post, had written to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, on
Whitman's behalf.[85] Whitman began the new appointment on January 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of
$1,200.[86] A month later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a furlough
because of his poor health.[85] By May 1, Whitman received a
promotion to a slightly higher clerkship[86] and published Drum-
Taps.[87]

Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his
job.[87] His dismissal came from the new Secretary of the Interior,
former Iowa Senator James Harlan.[86] Though Harlan dismissed
several clerks who "were seldom at their respective desks", he may
have fired Whitman on moral grounds after finding an 1860 edition
of Leaves of Grass.[88] O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton
had Whitman transferred to the Attorney General's office on July
1.[89] O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by
publishing a biased and exaggerated biographical study, The Good
Gray Poet, in January 1866.[90] The fifty-cent pamphlet defended
Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname
Walt Whitman's handwritten
and increased his popularity.[91] Also aiding in his popularity was
manuscript for "Broadway, 1861"
the publication of "O Captain! My Captain!", a relatively
conventional poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, the only
poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.[92]

Part of Whitman's role at the Attorney General's office was interviewing former Confederate soldiers for
Presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a
fancy for anything out of the ordinary."[93] In August 1866, he took a month off to prepare a new edition of
Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 after difficulty in finding a publisher.[94] He
hoped it would be its last edition.[95] In February 1868, Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England
thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti,[96] with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly
approved.[97] The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from the highly
respected writer Anne Gilchrist.[98] Another edition of Leaves of Grass was issued in 1871, the same year
it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident.[99] As Whitman's international fame
increased, he remained at the attorney general's office until January 1872.[100] He spent much of 1872
caring for his mother, who was now nearly eighty and struggling with arthritis.[101] He also traveled and
was invited to Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.[102]

Health decline and death

After suffering a paralytic stroke in early 1873, Whitman was

induced to move from Washington to the home of his brother—
George Washington Whitman, an engineer—at 431 Stevens Street
in Camden, New Jersey. His mother, having fallen ill, was also
there and died that same year in May. Both events were difficult for
Whitman and left him depressed. He remained at his brother's home
until buying his own in 1884.[103] However, before purchasing his
home, he spent the greatest period of his residence in Camden at his
Whitman spent his last years at his
brother's home on Stevens Street. While in residence there he was
home in Camden, New Jersey.
very productive, publishing three versions of Leaves of Grass
Today, it is open to the public as the among other works. He was also last fully physically active in this
Walt Whitman House. house, receiving both Oscar Wilde and Thomas Eakins. His other
brother, Edward, an "invalid" since birth, lived in the house.
When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move for business reasons, he bought his own house at
328 Mickle Street (now 330 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).[104] First taken care of by tenants, he
was completely bedridden for most of his time in Mickle Street. During this time, he began socializing with
Mary Oakes Davis—the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor, boarding with a family in Bridge
Avenue just a few blocks from Mickle Street.[105] She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885, to
serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with her a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a
canary, and other assorted animals.[106] During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of
Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.

While in Southern New Jersey, Whitman spent a good portion of his time in the then quite pastoral
community of Laurel Springs, between 1876 and 1884, converting one of the Stafford Farm buildings to
his summer home. The restored summer home has been preserved as a museum by the local historical
society. Part of his Leaves of Grass was written here, and in his Specimen Days he wrote of the spring,
creek and lake. To him, Laurel Lake was "the prettiest lake in: either America or Europe".[107]

As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, a version that has been
nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all
times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."[108]
Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a granite mausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000[109] and
visited it often during construction.[110] In the last week of his life, he was too weak to lift a knife or fork
and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony—monotony—monotony—in
pain."[111]

Whitman died on March 26, 1892.[112] An autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their
normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia,[109] and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest
had eroded one of his ribs. The cause of death was officially listed as "pleurisy of the left side, consumption
of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis and parenchymatous nephritis".[113] A public viewing of his
body was held at his Camden home; over 1,000 people visited in three hours.[2] Whitman's oak coffin was
barely visible because of all the flowers and wreaths left for him.[113] Four days after his death, he was
buried in his tomb at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.[2] Another public ceremony was held at the cemetery,
with friends giving speeches, live music, and refreshments.[3] Whitman's friend, the orator Robert Ingersoll,
delivered the eulogy.[114] Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families
were moved to the mausoleum.[115]

Writing
Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally
prose-like.[1] He also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry,
including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris.[116] He also openly
wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution.[95] He is often
labeled as the father of free verse, though he did not invent it.[1]

Poetic theory

Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The
proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has
Portrait of Whitman by absorbed it." He believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between
Thomas Eakins, 1887–88 the poet and society.[117] This connection was emphasized especially in
"Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration.[118] As
an American epic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of
the common people.[119] Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the
United States had on the masses.[120]

Lifestyle and beliefs

Alcohol

Whitman was a vocal proponent of temperance and in his youth rarely

drank alcohol. He once stated he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was
30[121] and occasionally argued for prohibition.[122] One of his earliest
long fiction works, the novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, first
published November 23, 1842, is a temperance novel.[123] Whitman wrote
the novel at the height of popularity of the Washingtonian movement,
though the movement itself was plagued with contradictions, as was
Franklin Evans.[124] Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by
the book[125] and called it "damned rot".[126] He dismissed it by saying he
wrote the novel in three days solely for money while he was under the
influence of alcohol himself.[127] Even so, he wrote other pieces Walt Whitman
recommending temperance, including The Madman and a short story
"Reuben's Last Wish".[128] Later in life he was more liberal with alcohol,
enjoying local wines and champagne.[129]

Religion

Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was more important than another, and
embraced all religions equally.[130] In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and
indicated he respected and accepted all of them—a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With
Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts,
bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".[130] In 1874, he was invited to write a poem about the
Spiritualism movement, to which he responded, "It seems to me nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude
humbug."[131] Whitman was a religious skeptic: though he accepted all churches, he believed in none.[130]
God, to Whitman, was both immanent and transcendent and the human soul was immortal and in a state of
progressive development.[132] American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia classes him as one of several
figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the
world."[133]

Sexuality

Though biographers continue to debate Whitman's sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual
or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. Whitman's sexual orientation is generally assumed on the basis of
his poetry, though this assumption has been disputed. His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more
earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late
19th century.[134][135] Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic
remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold
suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians".[136]
Whitman had intense friendships with many men and
boys throughout his life. Some biographers have
suggested that he did not actually engage in sexual
relationships with males,[137] while others cite letters,
journal entries, and other sources that they claim as proof
of the sexual nature of some of his relationships.[138]
English poet and critic John Addington Symonds spent
20 years in correspondence trying to pry the answer from
him.[139] In 1890 he wrote to Whitman, "In your
conception of Comradeship, do you contemplate the
possible intrusion of those semi-sexual emotions and
actions which no doubt do occur between men?" In reply,
Whitman denied that his work had any such implication,
asserting "[T]hat the calamus part has even allow'd the
possibility of such construction as mention'd is terrible—I
am fain to hope the pages themselves are not to be even
mention'd for such gratuitous and quite at this time Whitman and Peter Doyle, one of the men with
entirely undream'd & unreck'd possibility of morbid whom Whitman was believed to have had an
inferences—wh' are disavow'd by me and seem intimate relationship
damnable", and insisting that he had fathered six
illegitimate children. Some contemporary scholars are
skeptical of the veracity of Whitman's denial or the existence of the children he claimed.[140][141][142][143]

Peter Doyle may be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life.[144][145][146] Doyle was a bus
conductor whom Whitman met around 1866, and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed
in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not
get out at the end of the trip—in fact went all the way back with me."[147] In his notebooks, Whitman
disguised Doyle's initials using the code "16.4" (P.D. being the 16th and 4th letters of the alphabet).[145]
Oscar Wilde met Whitman in the United States in 1882 and told the homosexual-rights activist George
Cecil Ives that Whitman's sexual orientation was beyond question—"I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still
on my lips."[148] The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is secondhand. In 1924,
Edward Carpenter told Gavin Arthur of a sexual encounter in his youth with Whitman, the details of which
Arthur recorded in his journal.[149][150][151] Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright whether his
"Calamus" poems were homosexual—John Addington Symonds inquired about "athletic friendship," "the
love of man for man," or "the Love of Friends"[152]—he chose not to respond.[153][154] The manuscript of
his love poem "Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City", written when Whitman was 29, indicates it was
originally about a man.[155]

Another possible lover was Bill Duckett. As a teenager, he lived on the same street in Camden and moved
in with Whitman, living with him a number of years and serving him in various roles. Duckett was 15
when Whitman bought his house at 328 Mickle Street. From at least 1880, Duckett and his grandmother,
Lydia Watson, were boarders, subletting space from another family at 334 Mickle Street. Because of this
proximity, Duckett and Whitman met as neighbors. Their relationship was close, with the youth sharing
Whitman's money when he had it. Whitman described their friendship as "thick". Though some
biographers describe him as a boarder, others identify him as a lover.[156] Their photograph (left) is
described as "modeled on the conventions of a marriage portrait", part of a series of portraits of the poet
with his young male friends, and encrypting male–male desire.[157] Yet another intense relationship of
Whitman with a young man was the one with Harry Stafford, with whose family Whitman stayed when at
Timber Creek, and whom he first met when Stafford was 18, in 1876. Whitman gave Stafford a ring, which
was returned and re-given over the course of a stormy relationship lasting several years. Of that ring,
Stafford wrote to Whitman, "You know when you put it on there was but one thing to part it from me, and
that was death."[158]
 There is also some evidence that Whitman had sexual
relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship
with a New York actress, Ellen Grey, in the spring of
1862, but it is not known whether it was also sexual. He
still had a photograph of her decades later, when he
moved to Camden, and he called her "an old sweetheart
of mine".[159] In a letter, dated August 21, 1890, he
claimed, "I have had six children—two are dead". This
claim has never been corroborated.[160] Toward the end
of his life, he often told stories of previous girlfriends and
sweethearts and denied an allegation from the New York
Herald that he had "never had a love affair".[161] As
Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the
discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably
continue in spite of whatever evidence emerges."[137]

Sunbathing and swimming

Whitman reportedly enjoyed bathing naked and

sunbathing nude.[162] In his work Manly Health and
Walt Whitman and Bill Duckett Training, written under the pseudonym Mose Velsor, he
advised men to swim naked.[163] In A Sun-bathed
Nakedness, he wrote,

Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me ... Nature
was naked, and I was also ... Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! – ah if poor, sick, prurient
humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not
inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is
indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but
are themselves indecent.

Shakespeare authorship

Whitman was an adherent of the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in the historical
attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Whitman comments in his
November Boughs (1888) regarding Shakespeare's historical plays:

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—personifying in

unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste,
with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation)—only one of the "wolfish earls" so
plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the
true author of those amazing works—works in some respects greater than anything else in
recorded literature.[164]

Slavery
Like many in the Free Soil Party who were concerned about the threat slavery would pose to free white
labor and northern businessmen exploiting the newly colonized western territories,[165] Whitman opposed
the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the Wilmot Proviso.[166] At first he was
opposed to abolitionism, believing the movement did more harm than good. In 1846, he wrote that the
abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the advancement of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness".[167]
His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, as did the refusal of the
Southern states to put the interests of the nation as a whole above their own.[166] In 1856, in his
unpublished The Eighteenth Presidency, addressing the men of the South, he wrote "you are either to
abolish slavery or it will abolish you". Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free
African-Americans should not vote[168] and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans
in the legislature; as David Reynolds notes, Whitman wrote in prejudiced terms of these new voters and
politicians, calling them "blacks, with about as much intellect and calibre (in the mass) as so many
baboons."[169] George Hutchinson and David Drews have argued, without providing textual evidence
from Whitman's own early writings or other sources, that what little that "is known about the early
development of Whitman's racial awareness suggests that he imbibed the prevailing white prejudices of his
time and place, thinking of black people as servile, shiftless, ignorant, and given to stealing, although he
would remember individual blacks of his youth in positive terms".[170]

Nationalism

Whitman is often described as America's national poet, creating an image of the United States for itself.
"Although he is often considered a champion of democracy and equality, Whitman constructs a hierarchy
with himself at the head, America below, and the rest of the world in a subordinate position."[171][172] In
his study, "The Pragmatic Whitman: Reimagining American Democracy", Stephen John Mack suggests
that critics, who tend to ignore it, should look again at Whitman's nationalism: "Whitman's seemingly
mawkish celebrations of the United States ... [are] one of those problematic features of his works that
teachers and critics read past or explain away" (xv–xvi). Nathanael O'Reilly in an essay on "Walt
Whitman's Nationalism in the First Edition of Leaves of Grass" claims that "Whitman's imagined America
is arrogant, expansionist, hierarchical, racist and exclusive; such an America is unacceptable to Native
Americans, African-Americans, immigrants, the disabled, the infertile, and all those who value equal
rights."[171] Whitman's nationalism avoided issues concerning the treatment of Native Americans. As
George Hutchinson and David Drews further suggest in an essay "Racial attitudes", "Clearly, Whitman
could not consistently reconcile the ingrained, even foundational, racist character of the United States with
its egalitarian ideals. He could not even reconcile such contradictions in his own psyche." The authors
concluded their essay with:[170]

Because of the radically democratic and egalitarian aspects of his poetry, readers generally
expect, and desire for, Whitman to be among the literary heroes that transcended the racist
pressures that abounded in all spheres of public discourse during the nineteenth century. He
did not, at least not consistently; nonetheless his poetry has been a model for democratic poets
of all nations and races, right up to our own day. How Whitman could have been so
prejudiced, and yet so effective in conveying an egalitarian and antiracist sensibility in his
poetry, is a puzzle yet to be adequately addressed.

In reference to the Mexican-American War, Whitman wrote in 1864 that Mexico was "the only [country] to
whom we have ever really done wrong."[173] In 1883, celebrating the 333rd anniversary of Santa Fe,
Whitman argued that the indigenous and Spanish-Indian elements would supply leading traits in the
"composite American identity of the future."[174]
 As to our aboriginal or Indian population — the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the
North and West — I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls
on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear
about that. As America, from its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts,
entwines, faithfully identifies its own — are we to see it cheerfully accepting and using all the
contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside globe — and then rejecting the only ones
distinctively its own — the autochthonic ones? As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is
certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race
element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping
invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent
action?[175]

Legacy and influence

Walt Whitman has been claimed as the first "poet of democracy" in
the United States, a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a
singularly American character. An American-British friend of Walt
Whitman, Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really
understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of
Grass ... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he
would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do
without him."[4] Andrew Carnegie called him "the great poet of
America so far".[176] Whitman considered himself a messiah-like
figure in poetry.[177] Others agreed: one of his admirers, William
Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating the
birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth of Christ".[178]
Whitman was honored on a 'Famous
Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the
Americans Series' Postal issue, in
150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass:
1940.

If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your

imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself,
you have never composed a line of verse. You can
nominate a fair number of literary works as candidates
for the secular Scripture of the United States. They
might include Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two
series of Essays and The Conduct of Life. None of
those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first
edition of Leaves of Grass.[179]

In his own time, Whitman attracted an influential coterie of disciples and admirers. Other admirers included
the Eagle Street College, an informal group established in 1885 at the home of James William Wallace in
Eagle Street, Bolton, to read and discuss the poetry of Whitman. The group subsequently became known as
the Bolton Whitman Fellowship or Whitmanites. Its members held an annual "Whitman Day" celebration
around the poet's birthday.[180]

American poets
Whitman is one of the most influential American poets. Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman
"America's poet ... He is America."[5] To poet Langston Hughes, who wrote, "I, too, sing America",
Whitman was a literary hero.[181] Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its
leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like
Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker, and Gary Snyder.[182] Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among
Whitman's "wild children", and the title of his 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco is a deliberate
reference to Whitman's Starting from Paumanok.[183] June Jordan published a pivotal essay, entitled "For
the Sake of People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us" praising Whitman as a democratic poet
whose works to speak to people of color from all backgrounds.[184] United States poet laureate Joy Harjo,
who is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, counts Whitman among her influences.[185]

Latin American poets

Whitman's poetry influenced Latin American and Caribbean poets in the 19th and 20th centuries, starting
with Cuban poet, philosopher, and nationalist leader José Martí who published essays in Spanish on
Whitman's writings in 1887.[186][187][188] Álvaro Armando Vasseur's 1912 translations further raised
Whitman's profile in Latin America.[189] Peruvian vanguardist César Vallejo, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,
and Argentine Jorge Luis Borges acknowledged Walt Whitman's influence.[189]

European authors

Some, like Oscar Wilde and Edward Carpenter, viewed Whitman both as a prophet of a utopian future and
of same-sex desire – the passion of comrades. This aligned with their own desires for a future of brotherly
socialism.[190] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was a model for the
character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to
Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.[191]

Film and television

Whitman's life and verse have been referenced in a substantial number of works of film and video. In the
movie Beautiful Dreamers (Hemdale Films, 1992) Whitman was portrayed by Rip Torn. Whitman visits an
insane asylum in London, Ontario, where some of his ideas are adopted as part of an occupational therapy
program.[192]

In Dead Poets Society (1989) by Peter Weir, teacher John Keating inspires his students with the works of
Whitman, Shakespeare and John Keats.[192][193]

Whitman's poem "Yonnondio" influenced both a book (Yonnondio: From the Thirties, 1974) by Tillie
Olsen and a sixteen-minute film, Yonnondio (1994) by Ali Mohamed Selim.[192]

Whitman's poem "I Sing the Body Electric" (1855) was used by Ray Bradbury as the title of a short story
and a short story collection. Bradbury's story was adapted for the Twilight Zone episode of May 18, 1962,
in which a bereaved family buys a made-to-order robot grandmother to forever love and serve the
family.[194] "I Sing the Body Electric" inspired the showcase finale in the movie Fame (1980), a diverse
fusion of gospel, rock, and orchestra.[192][195]

Music and audio recordings

Whitman's poetry has been set to music by a large number of composers; indeed it has been suggested his
poetry has been set to music more than that of any other American poet except for Emily Dickinson and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[196] Those who have set his poems to music have included John Adams;
Ernst Bacon; Leonard Bernstein; Benjamin Britten; Rhoda Coghill; David Conte; Ronald Corp; George
Crumb; Frederick Delius; Howard Hanson; Karl Amadeus Hartmann; Hans Werner Henze; Paul
Hindemith; Ned Rorem; Charles Villiers Stanford; Robert Strassburg;[197] Ivana Marburger Themmen,[198]
Rossini Vrionides,[199] Ralph Vaughan Williams; Kurt Weill; Helen L. Weiss,[200] Charles Wood; and
Roger Sessions. Crossing, an opera composed by Matthew Aucoin and inspired by Whitman's Civil War
diaries, premiered in 2015.[201]

In 2014, German publisher Hörbuch Hamburg issued the bilingual double-CD audio book of the Kinder
Adams/Children of Adam cycle, based on translations by Kai Grehn in the 2005 Children of Adam from
Leaves of Grass (Galerie Vevais), accompanying a collection of nude photography by Paul Cava. The
audio release included a complete reading by Iggy Pop, as well as readings by Marianne Sägebrecht;
Martin Wuttke; Birgit Minichmayr; Alexander Fehling; Lars Rudolph; Volker Bruch; Paula Beer; Josef
Osterndorf; Ronald Lippok; Jule Böwe; and Robert Gwisdek.[202] In 2014 composer John Zorn released
On Leaves of Grass, an album inspired by and dedicated to Whitman.[203]

Namesake recognition

The Walt Whitman Bridge, which crosses the Delaware River near
his home in Camden, was opened on May 16, 1957.[204] In 1997,
the Walt Whitman Community School in Dallas opened, becoming
the first private high school catering to LGBT youth.[205] His other
namesakes include Walt Whitman High School (Bethesda,
Maryland), Walt Whitman High School (Huntington Station, New
York), the Walt Whitman Shops (formerly called "Walt Whitman
Mall") in Huntington Station, Long Island, New York, near his
Walt Whitman statue at the Walt
birthplace,[206] and Walt Whitman Road located in Huntington Whitman Bridge Entrance, 3100 S
Station and Melville, New York. Broad St, Philadelphia PA

Whitman was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in

2009,[207] and, in 2013, he was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates
LGBT history and people.[208]

A statue of Whitman by Jo Davidson is located at the entrance to the Walt Whitman Bridge and another
casting resides in the Bear Mountain State Park.

A coed summer camp founded in 1948 in Piermont, New Hampshire, is named after Whitman.[209][210]

A crater on Mercury is also named for him.[211]

Works
Franklin Evans (1842)
The Half-Breed; A Tale of the Western Frontier (1846)
Life and Adventures of Jack Engle (serialized in 1852)[39]
Leaves of Grass (1855, the first of seven editions through 1891)
Manly Health and Training (1858)[41]
Drum-Taps (1865)
 Democratic Vistas (1871)
Memoranda During the War (1876)
Specimen Days (1882)

See also
LGBT history in New York (19th century)
Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln
Walt Whitman's lectures on Abraham Lincoln

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1992. ISBN 0-929587-95-2
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22542-1
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ISBN 0-520-22687-9
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 Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage
Books, 1995. ISBN 0-679-76709-6
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Journalism and the First 'Leaves of Grass', 1840–1855. New York: Peter Lang Publishing,
2008. ISBN 978-1-4331-0383-4

External links

Archives
Walt Whitman papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library. (https://findin
gaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079623)
Walt Whitman documents at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library. (https://fi
ndingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079471)
Walt Whitman, "The Bible as Poetry." Manuscript 1883 (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/f
indingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.MS263) at the University of Chicago Special
Collections Research Center. (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/)
Walt Whitman collection 1884–1892 (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.p
hp?eadid=ICU.SPCL.WHITMANW) at the University of Chicago Special Collections
Research Center. (https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/)
Walt Whitman collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library.
Walt Whitman collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania. (http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/ead/upenn_rb
ml_MsColl190)
Walt Whitman collection (http://guides.lib.byu.edu/speccoll/whitman) at L. Tom Perry Special
Collections (https://sites.lib.byu.edu/sc/), Brigham Young University.
"The Untimeliness of the Walt Whitman Exhibition at the New York Public Library: An Open
Letter to Trustees," by Charles F. Heartman (http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/pacscl/WWC
C_MsColl66), at the John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives, William Way LGBT Community
Center. (https://www.waygay.org/archives)
Horace Traubel collection of Walt Whitman papers (https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?ms
s0099_0819) at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press. (h
ttps://library.udel.edu/special/)

Exhibitions
Walt Whitman in His Time and Ours (https://exhibitions.lib.udel.edu/whitman/) at Special
Collections, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press (https://library.udel.edu/spe
cial/)
Revising Himself: Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass (https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/whitma
n/) at the Library of Congress
Whitman Vignettes: Camden and Philadelphia (https://www.library.upenn.edu/about/exhibits
-events/whitman-vignettes) at Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts (https://www.library.upenn.edu/kislak), University of Pennsylvania
Walt Whitman Bard of Democracy (https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/walt-whitman) at
the Morgan Library and Museum
External video
Booknotes interview with
Historic sites Reynolds on Walt Whitman's
America: A Cultural Biography, April
Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site (http://ww 28, 1996 (https://www.c-span.org/vi
w.waltwhitman.org/)
deo/?71073-1/walt-whitmans-ameri
Walt Whitman Camden Home Historic Site (http://www. ca), C-SPAN
state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/historic/whitman/index.
html)

Other external links

Walt Whitman (https://curlie.org/Arts/Literature/World_Literature/American/19th_Century/Whi
tman%2C_Walt/) at Curlie
Walt Whitman: Online Resources at the Library of Congress. (https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/
bib/whitman/)
The Walt Whitman Archive (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/) includes all editions of Leaves
of Grass in page-images and transcription, as well as manuscripts, criticism, and biography.
Walt Whitman: Profile, Poems, Essays at Poets.org. (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/wa
lt-whitman)
Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online. Brooklyn Public Library. (https://archive.today/2014022518283
9/http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Skins/BEagle/Client.asp?Skin=BEagle&AW=
1393351193140&AppName=2&GZ=T)
Works by Walt Whitman (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Whitman,+Walt) at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Walt Whitman (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3
A%22Whitman%2C%20Walt%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Walt%20Whitman%22%20O
R%20creator%3A%22Whitman%2C%20Walt%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Walt%20Whit
man%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Whitman%2C%20W%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%2
2Walt%20Whitman%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Whitman%2C%20Walt%22%20O
R%20description%3A%22Walt%20Whitman%22%29%20OR%20%28%221819-1892%2
2%20AND%20Whitman%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet
Archive
Works by Walt Whitman (https://librivox.org/author/588) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Walt Whitman (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1098) at Find a Grave
Johnson, John A., and Lloyd D. Worley. "Criminals' Responses to Religious Themes in
Whitman's Poetry (http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/papers/Poetry1987.pdf)" (Archive (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20160305010942/http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/papers/Poetry1
987.pdf)). In Crime, Values, and Religion, edited by J. M. Day and W. S. Laufer, 133–51.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987.

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