Walt whitman when was he born

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His achievement is great, although it has been sometimes obscured by unfair, hostile criticism — or, conversely, by extravagant praise. He is essentially a poet, though other aspects of his achievement — as philosopher, mystic, or critic — have also been stressed. His father, Walter, was a laborer, carpenter, and house builder. His mother, Louisa, was a devout Quaker. In , the family moved to Brooklyn, where Walt had his schooling From to he held various jobs, some of them on newspapers in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

From to he was a schoolteacher in Long Island, despite the paucity of his own education. The division of Whitman's early life between town and country later enabled him to depict both environments with equal understanding and sympathy. He also traveled extensively throughout America, and so could appreciate the various regions of the land. Between and Whitman edited various periodicals and newspapers. It was, apparently, during this period that he began to compose the poems which were later published as Leaves of Grass.

In Walt's brother George was wounded in the Civil War. When Whitman traveled to Virginia to visit him, he saw large numbers of the wounded in hospitals. The Civil War was a major event in Whitman's career, stirring both his imagination and his sensibility and making him a dresser of spiritual wounds as well as of physical ones as he worked as a volunteer in hospitals.

Lincoln's assassination also moved Whitman deeply, and several poems bear testimony of his intense grief. In Whitman was fired from his post in the Department of the Interior in Washington because of the alleged indecency of Leaves of Grass.

He was hired by the Attorney General's office and remained there until when he suffered a mild paralytic stroke which left him a semi-invalid. In Whitman's last years , he was mostly confined to his room in the house which he had bought in Camden, New Jersey. Two friends, Horace Traubel and Thomas B. Harried, attended him. He died on March 26, Osgood , which brought him enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass David McKay, —92 and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye My Fancy David McKay, After his death on March 26, , Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Osgood, Passage to India J. Redfield, Leaves of Grass J. Redfield, Leaves of Grass William E. Chapin, Drum Taps William E. Born in , Edgar Allan Poe had a profound impact on American and international literature as National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens.

Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. In January of that year, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. In May he traveled to Camden, New Jersey, to see his ailing mother, who died just three days after his arrival.

Frail himself, Whitman found it impossible to continue with his job in Washington and relocated to Camden to live with his brother George and sister-in-law Lou. Over the next two decades, Whitman continued to tinker with Leaves of Grass. An edition of the collection earned the poet some fresh newspaper coverage after a Boston district attorney objected to and blocked its publication. That, in turn, resulted in robust sales, enough so that Whitman was able to buy a modest house of his own in Camden.

These final years proved to be both fruitful and frustrating for Whitman. His life's work received much-needed validation in terms of recognition, especially overseas, as over the course of his career many of his contemporaries had viewed his output as prurient, distasteful and unsophisticated. Yet even as Whitman felt new appreciation, the America he saw emerge from the Civil War disappointed him.

His health, too, continued to deteriorate. On March 26, , Whitman passed away in Camden. Right up until the end, he'd continued to work with Leaves of Grass , which during his lifetime had gone through many editions and expanded to some poems. Whitman's final book, Good-Bye, My Fancy , was published the year before his death. He was buried in a large mausoleum he had built in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery. Despite the previous outcry surrounding his work, Whitman is considered one of America's most groundbreaking poets, having inspired an array of dedicated scholarship and media that continues to grow.

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