Walter Whitman

Walter Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, journalist, and essayist whose Leaves of Grass changed the sound and scale of American poetry. First published in 1855 and revised throughout his life, Leaves of Grass includes major poems such as Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Whitman matters because he expanded poetic form into long free-verse lines capable of holding democracy, the body, sexuality, labor, death, war, and national identity. He worked as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, an experience that deepened his elegiac and humanitarian vision. His language is expansive, intimate, and prophetic, insisting that ordinary people and common life are worthy of song. Whitman's quotes retain that large democratic confidence and tenderness toward embodied existence.

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