Poet's Corner

Walt Whitman

Read his poem "O Captain! My Captain!"

(1819-1892)
Variant Name(s): Walter Whitman (full name)
Nationality: American
Career: Poet, essayist, short story writer, journalist, editor, printer, and educator

The second of nine children, Whitman was born in 1819 on Long Island, New York, to Quaker parents. In 1823 the Whitmans moved to Brooklyn, where Whitman attended public school. At age eleven he left school to work as an office boy in a law office and then as a typesetter's apprentice at a number of print shops. Although his family moved back to Long Island in 1834, Whitman stayed in Brooklyn and then New York City to become a compositor. Unable to find work, he rejoined his family on Long Island in 1836 and taught at several schools. In addition to teaching, Whitman started his own newspaper, the Long Islander. He subsequently edited numerous papers for short periods over the next fourteen years, including the New York Aurora and the Brooklyn Eagle, and published poems and short stories in various periodicals.

Whitman did little in terms of employment from 1850 to 1855. Instead, he focused on his own work, writing and printing the first edition of his collection of poems Leaves of Grass. Over the next few years, Whitman continued to write and briefly returned to journalism. During the American Civil War he tended wounded soldiers in army hospitals in Washington, D.C., while working as a copyist in the army paymaster's office. Following the war Whitman worked for the Department of the Interior and then as a clerk at the Justice Department. He remained in this position until he suffered a paralytic stroke in 1873. Although he lived nearly twenty more years and published four more editions of Leaves of Grass, Whitman produced little significant new work following his stroke. He died in Camden, New Jersey, at age 72.

Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale.
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