 Walt Whitman by photographer George C. Cox. 1887 in New York Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) was an American poet whose best known work is the poetry collection Leaves of Grass[1][2], a book-sized opus written in a flowing free verse style. It is now considered a masterpiece of American literature, and Whitman is known as the innovator who first introduced the free verse style of writing poetry. Whitman self-published the book in 1855 and continued revising it until his death.
Whitman as a cultural icon
Whitman has recently been resurrected as a popular heroic figure, seen as embodying acceptance for androgyny, bisexuality, and sensuality in general[3], a contemporary trend of evaluating writers more for being perceived as a member of a suppressed social group than on literary merit. Whitman's enduring popularity has scarcely needed the boost of this phenomenon. His importance in American culture, especially in the northeast United States, is reflected in the schools, roads, rest stops, and bridges that have been named after him[4], including the Walt Whitman bridge spanning the Delaware River between Philadelphia and New Jersey that opened for traffic in 1957.
Poem: A Noiseless Patient Spider
This short Whitman poem in free verse is included in most American poetry anthologies:[5]:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Notes
- ↑
Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman, complete text free from Project Gutenberg. As well as shorter poems (notably 'A Noiseless Patient Spider'), Leaves of Grass contains three long poems: ‘I Sing the Body Electric,' ‘The Sleepers,' and ‘Song of Myself'.
- ↑
A group of Whitman poems about the civil war is sometimes published separately under the title Drum-Taps.
- ↑ The New York Times Style Magazine: 'Walt Whitman, Poet of a Contradictory America' by Jesse Green, Sept. 20, 2020, p. 74; last access 9/21/2020.
- ↑ There is the Walt Whitman High School (Bethesda, MD), Walt Whitman Elementary School (Woodbury, NJ), Walt Whitman High School (Huntington Station, NY), Walt Whitman Boulevard (Cherry Hill, NJ), and the Walt Whitman rest stop along the NJ Turnpike in Cherry Hill, to name a few.
- ↑ From Leaves of Grass, 'A Noiseless Patient Spider'.
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