Walt Whitman (1819-1892)... an American Poet

"Come, said my soul,

  Such verses for my body let us write, (for we are one)."

                                                              - Whitman

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: The Heritage Reprints, 1936.

Text by Walt Whitman

• "Leaves of Grass" 

1. "Walt Whitman."Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. 17 June 2007 

< http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/servlet/

HistRC/hitsr=d&origSearch=true&bucket=gal&o=&tab=1&n=10&l=dR&items=0&tabMap=23&c=2&docNum=

BT2310000743&sgPhrase=false&locID=asuniv&secondary=true&t=

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Walt Whitman is probably the most important poet in the 19th century and most influential poet of his time and time to come. His most popular work, Leaves of Grass, is evidence of his mastery in weaving images, creating rhythm, and the constructing of poetry, as a whole. He wrote in free verse, relying heavily on the rhythms on native American speech. Whitman's poems embodies the poet's extraordinary experiences in his discovery of nature, identity, the unnatural, sexuality, the divine, rebirth, and so much more. All experiences are of Whitman's remarkable and dreaming mind, seeing into his own world as well as the physical world. The Civil War had an impact on Whitman, where he attended to wounded soldiers and offered comfort with his humanity, and influenced him to write a set of poems included in the Drum Taps (1865). Whitman influenced the Transcendentalism period by contributing the most effective writings about the human world and writings that reached into the mystic, providing a different mood in poetry.

The primary purpose of the website is to provide students, their teachers, and library patrons with a single place to begin researching the vast topic of U.S. history from the earliest days of discovery and exploration to the present. The page is an electronic resource from the ASU library database. It's credibility is based on the primary sources providing information for the biography, such as excerpts from Whitman's poem and articles existing during his time, and authors of the site are scholar researchers and writers.

The biography on Whitman provides information about him that helps in understanding his writing, therefore, getting an idea of the literary theme. The author of the page also provides brief descriptions of Whitman's views in the texts, as well as provide texts' titles, giving an idea of what literary term to apply to such text. -Dolmii Remeliik