The Portable Walt Whitman

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When Walt Whitman self-published a collection of 12 poems entitled Leaves of Grass in 1855 he was an unknown, but ambitious, journalist from Long Island - by the time of his death he was beginning to be recognised as one of the most distinctive poetic voices of the modern world. His poetry, which he continually revised and republished over the course of his life, broke new ground in its treatment of the individual, eroticism, mortality and the trauma of the Civil War and created a new, unfamiliar yet unabashedly American, voice for his country and his fellow people.

Author Bio

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was born on Long Island and educated in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a printer's devil, journeyman compositor, itinerant schoolteacher, editor, and unofficial nurse to Northern and Southern soldiers. Michael Warner is a professor of English at Rutgers University. His most recent works include American Sermons- The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, and his essays and journalism have appeared in the Village Voice, the Nation, and other magazines.