Walt Whitman
- Born on May 31, 1819 in Huntington Long Island
- Died on March 26, 1892 in Camden New Jersey
- Knows as Father of free verse
- Was a journalist, a teacher, and a volunteered nurse during Civil War.
- Opposed Slavery
Walt Whitman was born in a large but poor family, his father sold their farmland when Whitman was born. Due to the failure investment that his father made, Whitman was forced to leave school at the age of 11, to help serve food onto tables. Six years later, he started to teach at a school in Long Island for about five years. In 1841, he began to gain interest in journalism, yet his career in writing newspaper articles was not successful. Instead of following most typical American opinions on slavery and women's rights, he decided to follow his own opinions and write down what he believed should happen to the society, therefore he was not welcomed to most publications.
Although his stay in New Orleans was relatively short, but he for the first time encountered slavery and slave trade. After returning to Brooklyn, he started to focus on his articles about slavery, which most people did not agree with.
In 1855, things finally started to get better, Whitman finally got a chance to publish 12 poems named after Leaves Of Grass, yet due to the lack of funding, he could only publish 795 copies of his work. Although his work received little attention and critics from the public, but it did caught Ralph Waldo Emerson's attention. He was fascinated by Whitman's work, thence he decided to send Thoreau to meet with this newcomer. Although Whitman's family is started to fall apart, yet he still managed to publish 33 poems and also a new collection of poems when he was volunteering as a nurse in Civil War.
In Whitman's later years, he decided to visit veterans from the Civil War and hoped to gain some inspiration and ideas to work on for his final collections. Just before he passed away in March, he had expanded Leaves of Grass to 300 poems that contains seven editions. Later on he was known as the father of free verse and his poems were considered to be essential for one to understand American Literature.
"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth" —Walt Whitman