This Halcyon Classics ebook contains more than 400 poems by American poet, writer, and journalist Walt Whitman. Whitman (1819-1892) continues to be one of the most influential American poets. He was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection LEAVES OF GRASS (included in this ebook), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. The tone and content of many of the poems in LEAVES OF GRASS has led to much speculation about Whitman's sexual orientation. This collection also includes poems from Whitman's PATRIOTIC POEMS. Among the poems in LEAVES OF GRASS are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." This ebook is DRM free and has an active table of contents for easy navigation. This unexpurgated edition contains the complete text with errors and omissions corrected.
Author
Walter Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). After working as clerk, teacher, journalist and laborer, Whitman wrote his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a humanistic celebration of humanity, in 1855. Emerson, whom Whitman revered, said of Leaves of Grass that it held "incomparable things incomparably said." During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an army nurse, later writing Drum Taps (1865) and Memoranda During the War (1867). His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. After a stroke in 1873, which left him partially paralyzed, Whitman lived his next 20 years with his brother, writing mainly prose, such as Democratic Vistas (1870). Leaves of Grass was published in nine editions, with Whitman elaborating on it in each successive edition. In 1881, the book had the compliment of being banned by the commonwealth of Massachusetts on charges of immorality. A good friend of Robert Ingersoll, Whitman was at most a Deist who scorned religion. D. 1892. More: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/ http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Wal... http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt\_Whi... http://www.poemhunter.com/walt-whitman/
