Whitmania: Round One

In studying Walt Whitman (1819-1892) I found, as Iain did, that it would be beneficial to start a study on him with his biography. By clicking here you will be able to enjoy a wonderful website on everything Whitman (including some nude photos of the jolly old man). In looking at his life it is easy to see where all the different genres of writing he employed came from.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “The Poet” writes, “our [America’s] log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the Northern trade, the Southern planting, the Western clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.” It is this challenge that Whitman answered. He systematically set out in his poetry to record all that Emerson called for. In fact, Whitman even quoted this passage in a first edition of Leaves of Grass. It is in this respect that Whitman is Romantic. In taking up Emerson’s challenge, Whitman began to respect and revere not only the nature of America, but everything that America consisted of.