Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819 on Long Island in New York. He was one of nine children in a close family. His father was a carpenter.
Whitman ended his formal schooling at age 11 and went to work for a printing press. This is where his love of words began. By the age of 16 he was already writing poetry, but at first most of what he published was prose -- stories and newspaper articles. He founded his own newspaper on Long Island in 1839.
As a young man, Whitman worked for newspapers and wrote fiction. He traveled alone across the country and spent time wandering the streets of New York. In 1850 he began work on his best known book of poems, Leaves of Grass.
Walt Whitman's poetry was revolutionary for its time. In his day, proper poetry had to rhyme, and it had to be about "polite" subjects. Whitman wrote in "free verse" -- no rhyme, no specific length of lines. He also wrote about topics that were considered off-limits, like the beauty of the human body and sexuality. The publishers who looked at Leaves of Grass refused to publish it, so Whitman published the first edition of it himself.
Leaves of Grass was praised by another famous American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, but most people who read it thought it was obscene. Whitman made hardly any money off his poetry and had to work full-time and write on the side.
In 1862, Whitman's brother George was injured while fighting in the Civil War. Whitman left New York City and moved to Washington, DC, where his brother was recuperating in a hospital. Even after his brother left the hospital, Whitman stayed on, working as a nurse's aid and writing letters home from the wounded soldiers. This experience changed him. His poetry after that experience was darker and sadder than the high energy of Leaves of Grass.
During and after the Civil War, Whitman worked in Washington, DC in various positions for the government. During most of his life he was not able to support himself by writing.
In the early 1870s, an edition of Leaves of Grass was published in England. The English loved Whitman's poetry, and finally he began making money and earning the fame he deserved. At the same time his health began to fail. In 1873 he moved to CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY to be with his dying mother and his brother. He lived in CAMDEN, NEW
JERSEY the rest of his life and is buried there in Harleigh Cemetery, next to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.Walt Whitman's house is a museum in downtown Camden, across the street from the county jail.
Whitman is considered the best American poet and is often called "America's Poet." His work took all the poetry in the world in a new direction and led to the variety of poetry we read today.
