VIII. Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819~1892), known as the first important American poet, was born on a Long Island farm on May 31, 1819. He was taught in various Long Island schools and worked for several newspapers. He published some of his writings, but by his mid-thirties had still not displayed the slightest hint of his unique talent and vision. He published Leaves of Grass himself in 1855. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was a slim volume of poetry but it was quite a success. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a congratutory letter to Whitman with the famous lines so many writers have since wished to hear: “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that the America has yet contributed… I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”Whitman published the ninth edition of Leaves of Grass before he died on March 26, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey. Many writers have been called timeless, but Walt Whitman deserves this description in a special way. His poems were about himself, plain and simple, especially the ecstatic Song of Myself, which celebrated the explosive joy of living inside a human body. His poems were as sexually frank as diary entries, and the rhythms of the words took “free verse” to a new threshold; it was as if meter and rhyme had never existed. The influence of Walt Whitman on the modern world is significant. Describing Walt Whitman’s presence in Latin America, Professor Fernando Alegria at Stanford University once said: “Studying Whitman in the poetry of Hispanic America is like searching for the footprints of a ghost that can be felt everywhere but is nowhere to be seen.”
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