American poet, journalist and essayist, best known for Leaves of Grass (1855), which was occasionally banned, and the poems 'I Sing the Body Electric' and 'Song of Myself.' Walt Whitman incorporated natural speech rhythms into poetry. He disregarded metre, but the overall effect has a melodic character. Harold Bloom has stated in The Western Canon (1994) that "no Western poet, in the past century and half, not even Browning, or Leopardi or Baudelaire, overshadows Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson."

One's self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the world Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for
  the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, 1 or freest action form d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing."
('Song of Myself,' Leaves of Grass: The Poems of Walt Whitman [selected], with introduction by Ernest Rhys, London: Walter Scott, 1886, p. 3)

Walt Whitman was born in Long Island, New York, the son of a Quaker carpenter. Whitman's mother was descended from Dutch farmers; there were slaves employed on the farm when Whitman was very young. His on slavery views have been a subject of debate and interpretation, but it can be said that his attitudes evolved over time. In his journalism Whitman undeniable attacked abolitionism, but it's not the whole truth. Langston Hughes, citing his poems that denounce slavery, argued that "there has been no clearer statement made on equality or civil or political rights". (Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass by Martin Klammer, 1996, pp. 1-2)

After leaving school in 1830 Whitman became printer's apprentice. When the Great Fire of 1835 devastated the city, and the printing industry, Whitman was forced to return to his family for a period. However, he had no intention of living the life of a farmer. He worked then as a teacher and journeyman printer, and held a great variety of other jobs while writing and editing several periodicals, The Brooklyn Eagle from 1846 to 1848 and The Brooklyn Times from 1857 to 1858. In between Whitman spent three months on a New Orleans paper, and earning his living from undistinguished hack-work. During his formative years as a poet, he read Emerson, Carlyle, and such German writers as Goethe, Heine, Schlegel, and Hegel, though his knowledge of the German language was negligible. "I couldn't understand a word," he confessed later in life.

In New York Whitman witnessed the rapid growth of the city. At Pfaff's saloon on Broadway, a favorite hangout for bohemians, he was a celebrity resulting from his writings which Christian Examiner considered to be obscene. Whitman wanted to write a new kind of poetry in tune with energy of his days, without being blind to the life outside his poems. An important theme in 'Song of Myself' is suffering and death – Whitman identified with Jesus and his fate, writing in an early draft of the poem: "In vain were nails driven through my hands. / I remember my crucifixion and bloody coronation / I remember the mockers and the buffeting insults / The sepulchre and the white linen have yielded me up / I am alive in New York and San Francisco, / Again I tread the streets after two thouand years." (Selected Poems by Walt Whitman, edited by Harold Bloom, 2003, p. 7)

The first edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in July 1855 at Whitman's own expense – he also personally had set the type for it – and the poem was about the writer himself. In the same year there also appeared Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, another great American epic. The third edition of Leaves was published during Whitman's wandering years in 1860. It was greeted with warm appreciation, although at first his work was not hugely popular. Ralph Waldo Emerson was among his early admirers and wrote in 1855: "I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy."

Around the time of writing the first edition, Whitman knew little or nothing about Indian philosophy, but later critics have recognized Indian ideas expressed in the poems – words from the Sanskrit are used correctly in some of the poems written after 1858. Leaves of Grass also includes a group of poems entitled "Calamus", which has been taken as reflection of the poet's homosexuality, although according to Whitman they celebrated the "beautiful and sane affection of man for man". (Acorus calamus, often called Sweet Flag, is a tall perennial marsh plant with strong cinnamon-like smell.) During the Civil War Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, where his close friends included William Douglas O'Connor, a writer and daguerrotypist, and his wife Ellen, who invited him to their home.

Following the shock of the First Battle of Bull Run, Whitman wrote the patriotic poem 'Beat! Beat! Drums!' (1861), in which the beating of the war drums is compared to a brutal force, that shatters the peaceful life. At that time the future of America seemed to him "smash’d like a china plate", as he said after the war. When his brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman went there to care for him and also for other Union and Confederate soldiers. According to some sources, Whitman had only one abortive attempt at a sexual relationship, presumably homosexual, in the winter of 1859-60 with a young Confederate soldier, whose leg was amputated. "Our affection is quite an affair, quite romantic," he wrote, "sometimes when I lean over to say I am going, he puts his arm around my neck, draws my face down, &c." (Whitman Possessed: Poetry, Sexuality, and Popular Authority by Mark Maslan, 2001, p. 19)

Toward the end of war, in 1865, Whitman met on a stormy night a streetcar conductor named Peter Doyle, who described their encounter: "We were familiar at once– I put my hand on his knee – we understood." ('"Pete the Great": A Biography of Peter Doyle' by Martin G. Murray, in Walt Whitman Quaterly Review, Volume 12|Number 1, 1994, p. 13) From that night on, Doyle was Whitmen's closest companion in Washington, D.C.; the romantic friendship continued nearly up to Whitman's dearth. The poet's letters to Doyle were published in 1897 under the title Calamus by his first biographer, the Canadian progressive psychiatrist and mystic Richard Maurice Bucke. Doyle had witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Washington D.C.'s Ford Theatre and later claimed that Whitman made use of his account in his poem 'O Captain! My Captain!'.

The war had its effect on the writer, which is shown in the poems published under the title of Drum-Taps (1865). In its companion volume, Sequel (1865-66), appeared the great elegy on President Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'. Another famous poem about the death of Lincoln is 'O Captain! My Captain!'. "I love the president personally," Whitman wrote in his diary in October 1863. (Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself by Jerome Loving, 2000, p. 288) It is possible, that Lincoln was familiar with Leaves of Grass, and once remarked on seeing Whitman on the streets: "Well, he looks like a man." (Lincoln in American Memory by Merrill D. Peterson, 1994, p. 139) This is the story the poet himself liked to tell. Whitman's unpublished prose pieces and war journalism, written for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York Times and other New York papers, were collected in Memoranda During the War (1875) and Specimen Days and Collect (1882).

On the basis of his services Whitman was given a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. He transferred then to the attorney general's office, when his chief labelled Leaves of Grass an indecent book. It is known that Whitman himself wrote positive reviews and published them anonymously in newspapers and magazines.  He wasn't as concerned about money as his freedom of speech. In 'Song of Myself' he said: "I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?" 

In England Whitman's work was better received – among his admirers were Alfred Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A paralytic attack in 1873 destroyed Whitman's health and he was forced to give up his work. During his recuperation Whitman was nursed by Doyle and Ellen O'Connor. Whitman wrote in his journal about taking calomel; the drug was thought to be the remedy against all ills. ". . . had a bowel motion this morning (took a calomel powder last night) . . . " (The Correspondence: Volume IV: 1886-1889, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller, 1969,  p. 174)

At the age of sixty-four, Whitman settled in a little house on Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, where he spent almost the rest of his life. He was taken care of by a widow he had befriended. His reputation, which was shadowed by his outspokenness on sexual matters, began to rise after recognition in England by Algerton Charles Swinburne, Anne Gilchrist, and Edward Carpenter. In 1871 Whitman politely declined Gilchrist's offer of marriage. Visitors from abroad also included in 1882 the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, who said that "there is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honor so much". ('The Poet's Reception and Legcy' by Andrew C. Higgins, in A Companion to Walt Whitman, edited by Donald D. Kummings, 2009, p. 442)

A story of Whitman's later years, told by a publisher, reveals that the author never lost his self-esteem during his last years. Whitman had entered with his ruffled beard and sombrero the lobby of the Hotel Albert in New York and every man in it raised his newspaper to hide his face from Whitman. He turned and went out. The publisher, for some reason, followed him and asked who he was. The man said: "I am Walt Whitman. If you'll lend me a dollar, you will be helping immortality to stumble on." (The March of Literature by Ford Madox Ford, 1938, p. 775)

Jorge Luis Borges has seen Whitman as the hero of his epic, a character he yearned to be: "Thus, on one page of the work, Whitman is born on Long Island; on others, in the South. Thus, in one of the mostly authentic sections of "Song of Myself," he relates a heroic episode of the Mexican War and says he heard the story told in Texas, a place he never went." (The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999, p. 447)

In 1881 there appeared a newly augmented edition of Leaves of Grass. A collection of his newspaper pieces, November Boughs, came out in 1888 . His final volume was the 'Deathbed' edition of Leaves of Grass, which he prepared in 1891-92. It concludes with the prose piece 'A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads', in which he attempts to explain his life and work. Whitman died on March 26, 1892, in Camden.

Whitman's wavelike verse and his fresh use of language helped to liberate American poetry. He wanted to be a national bard, his prophetic note echoed, among other books, the Bible, but his erotic candor separated him from conventionally romantic poets. He also boasted that he was 'non-literary and non-decorous' – which perhaps was not really true. When he urged the Muse to forget the matter of Troy and develop new themes, he knew what the matter of Troy was.

Leaves of Grass was first presented as a group of 12 poems, and followed by five revised and three reissued editions during the author's lifetime. 'I Sing the Body Electric' was originally untitled. In the 1856 edition it appeared as 'Poem of the Body' and in the 1860 edition, which featured more than one hundred new poems, it was the third poem in th 'Children of Adam' sequence. This hymn in praise of human sexuality caused an uproar. Emerson, who had praised the first edition, urged his friend to cut it out of the book. In Whitman's thought, the body and soul are interlinked: "I am the poet of the body / And I am the poet of the soul", he wrote in his notebook.

'I Sing the Body Electric' is also the name of one of Ray Bradbury stories, which address the essential questions of the poem. The science fiction story tells of a family, which buys an immortal Robot Grandma. She turns out to be more than a soulless electrical construct, or as she explains: "I am all the people who thought of me and planned me and built me and set me running. So I am people." (I Sing the Body Electric!: Stories by Ray Bradbury, 1969, p. 177) Bradbury said once in an interview that "I believe that the flesh of man contains the very soul of God, that we are, finally, irrevocably and responsibly, God Himself incarnate, that we shall carry this seed of God into space." ('Ray Bradbury: Space Age Moralist' by William F. Nolan, in Conversations with Ray Bradbury, edited by Steven L. Aggelis, 2004, p. 81)

Whitman maintained that a poet's style should be simple and natural, without orthodox meter or rhyme. The poems were written to be spoken, but they have great variety in rhythm and tonal volume. From early on, Whitman had been filled with a love of nature. The central theme arises from his pantheistic view of life.

In the introduction of Leaves of Grass Whitman wrote: "The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity . . . nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art." (Leaves of Grass, 1855, pp.  vi-vii)

Whitman's free verse has influenced generations of poets. He was a great inspiring example for the beat-generation (Ginsberg, Kerouac, etc.). "I feel kin to Jesenin / and Walt Whitman," wrote the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. (The Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko 1953 to 1965, translated with an introduction by George Reavey, 1965, p. 5)

For further reading: Reader's Guide by G.W. Allen (1970); Critical Essays on Walt Whitman, ed. by J. Woodress (1983); Language and Style by C.C.Hollis (1983); Walt Whitman by James E. Miller Jr., Helen Regenstein (1990); From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman by Philip Callow (1992); Masculine Landscapes by Byrne R.S. Fone (1992); The Growth of Leaves of Grass by M. Jimmie Killingsworth (1993); Walt Whitman; The Centennial Essays, ed. by Ed Folsom (1994); The Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman, ed. by Ezra Greenspan (1995); Walt Whitman by Catherine Reef (1995); Walt Whitman & the World, ed. by Gay Wilson Allen, Ed Folsom (1995); Walt Whitman: A Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall (1997); Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. by J.R. Lemaster, Donald D. Kummings (1998); Walt Whitman: A Comprehensive Research and Study Guide, ed. by Harold Bloom (1999); A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman, ed. by David S. Reynolds (1999); Walt Whitman, ed. by Jim Perlman (1999); Walt Whitman by Jerome Loving (1999); Walt Whitman's Song of Myself: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition by Walt Whitman and Ezra Greenspan (2004); Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin (2014); Walt Whitman in Washington by Garrett Peck (2015); Walt Whitman in Context, edited by Joanna Levin, Chapman University, Edward Whitley (2018); The Persian Whitman: Beyond a Literary Reception by Behnam M. Fomeshi (2019); Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America, as Told to Horace Traubel, edited and with an introduction by Brenda Wineapple (2019); The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics by Betsy Erkkila (2020); Walt Whitman and his Caribbean Interlocutors: José Martí, C.L.R. James, and Pedro Mir: Song and Counter-song by Rafael Bernabe (2021); Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy by Mark Edmundson (2021); Walt Whitman: A Companion by John E. Schwiebert (2022); Walt Whitman and the Making of Jewish American Poetry by Dara Barnat (2023); The Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, edited by Kenneth M. Price and Stefan Schöberlein (2024); Comrade Whitman: From Russian to Internationalist Icon by Delphine Rumeau (2024) - Museums: Walt Whitman's birthplace, 246 Old Whitman Road, Huntington Station, Suffolk.  Note: Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote Spoon River Anthology, published a biography of Walt Whitmanin in 1937.

Selected works:

• Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, 1842
• Leaves of Grass, 1855 (first edition, 2nd ed. 1856, 3rd ed. 1860, etc., the 'deathbed' edition 1891-92)
  - Ruohonlehtiä (suom. Viljo Laitinen, 1954) / Ruohoa: runoja (suom. Arvo Turtiainen, 1965)
• Sequel, 1865
• Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, 1865
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, 1867
• Poems by Walt Whitman, 1868 (selected and edited by William Michael Rossetti)
• After All, Not To Create Only: Recited by Walt Whitman on Invitation of Managers, American Institute, on Opening Their 40th Annual Exhibition, New York, Noon, September 7, 1871, 1871
• Demiocratic Vistas, 1871
• Passage to India, 1871
• As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, and Other Poems, 1872
• Memoranda During the War, 1875
• Two Rivulets: Including Democtatic Vistas, Centennial Songs, and Passage to India, 1876
• Specimen Days & Collect, 1882-83
• Backward Glance on My Own Road, 1884
• Leaves of Grass: The Poems of Walt Whitman, 1886 (selected by Ernest Rhys)
• Specimen Days in America, 1887 (rev. ed.)
• Complete Poems & Prose of Walt Whitman, 1888
• November Boughs, 1888
• Gems from Walt Whitman, 1889 (selected by Elizabeth Porter Gould)
• Good-Bye by Fancy: 2nd Annex to Leaves of Grass, 1891  
• Autobiographia; or, The Story of a Life, Selected from the Prose Wrtings of Walt Whitman, 1892 (edited by Arthur Stedman)
• Complete Prose Works, 1892
• Selected Poems, 1892 (edited by Arthur Stedman)
• Calamus: A Series of Letters Written During the Years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle), 1897 (edited by Richard Maurice Bucke)
• The Wound Dresser: A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washington During the War of the Rebellion, 1898 (edited by Richard Maurice Bucke)
• Notes and Fragments, Left by Walt Whitman, 1899 (edited by Richard Maurice Bucke)
• President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn, 1900
• The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman,1902 (10 vols., eds. Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace L. Traubel)
• Letters Written by Walt Whitman to His Mother from 1866 to 1872: Together with Certain Papers Prepared from Material Now First Utilized, 1902 (edited by Thomas B. Harned)
• Memories of President Lincoln, and Other Lyrics of the War, 1904
• Selected poems of Walt Whitman, 1904 (edited, with introduction and notes, by Julian W. Abernethy)
• Walt Whitman’s Diary in Canada, with Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Note-Books, 1904 (edited by William Sloane Kennedy)
• The Rolling Earth: Outdoor Scenes and Thoughts from the Writings of Walt Whitman, 1912 (comp. by Waldo R. Browne; with an introduction by John Burroughs)
• The Sleepers: A Poem, 1919 (embellished with sixteen new original woodcuts designed and engraved by Marcel Gaillard)
• Poems by Walt Whitman, 1921 (introduction by Carl Sandburg)
• The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, 1921 (ed. by Emory Holloway)
• Criticism: An Unpublished Essay, 1924
• Two Prefaces, 1926 (with an introductory note by Christopher Morley)
• The Half-Breed, and Other Stories, 1927 (now first collected by Thomas Ollive Mabbott; woodcuts by Allen Lewis)
• Pictures: An Unpublished Poem of Walt Whitman, 1927 (with an introduction and notes by Emory Holloway)
• Rivulets of Prose: Critical Essays, 1928 (edited by Carolyn Wells & Alfred F. Goldsmith)
• Walt Whitman’s workshop. A collection of unpublished manuscripts, 1928 (edited with an introduction and notes by Clifton Joseph Furness)
• I Sit and Look Out:  Editorials from the Brooklyn daily times, 1932 (selected and edited by Emory Holloway and Vernolian Schwarz)
• Walt Whitman and the Civil War, 1933 (edited by Charles I. Glicksberg)
• Song of the Redwood Tree, 1934 (introduction by Aurelia Henry Reinhardt)
• O Captain! My Captain!, 1935
• Seven Letters of Walt Whitman, 1935
• Letters Written by Walt Whitman to His Mother, 1866-1872, 1936 (with an introductory note by Rollo G. Silver)
• New York Dissected, 1936 (introduction and notes by Emory Holloway and Ralph Adimari) 
• Walt Whitman in Camden: A Selection of Prose from Specimen Days, 1938 (with a preface by Christopher Morley, and photographs by Arnold Genthe)
• Walt Whitman, 1945 (selected and with notes by Mark Van Doren)
• Walt Whitmanäs Backward Glances, 1947 (edited with an introduction on the evolution of the text, by Sculley Bradley and John A. Stevenson)
• The Complete Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, as Prepared by Him for the Deathbed Ed., 1948 (2 vols., with an introd. by Malcolm Cowley)
• Faint Clews & Indirections: Manuscripts of Walt Whitman and His Family, 1949 (ed. by Clarence Gohdes and Rollo G. Silver)
• Walt Whitman of the New York "Aurora," Editor at Twenty-Two: A Collection of Recently Discovered Writings, 1950 (edited by Joseph Jay Rubin and Charles H. Brown)
• Whitman and Rolleston: A Correspondence, 1951 (edited with an introd. and notes by Horst Frenz)
• The Whitman Reader, 1955 (edited, with an introduction by Maxwell Geismar)
• Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860) A Parallel Text, 1955 (edited with notes and introd. by Fredson Bowers)
• An 1855-56 Notebook Toward the Second Edition of Leaves of Grass, 1959 (introduction and notes by Harold W. Blodgett; with a foreword by Charles E. Feinberg; additional notes by William White)
• Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, 1959 (edited with an introd. and glossary by James E. Miller, Jr.)
• Walt Whitman’s Civil War. Compiled & Edited from Published & Unpublished Sources by Walter Lowenfels, with the Assistance of Nan Braymer, 1960
• Correspondence 1842-1867, 1961 (Volume 1, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• Correspondence 1868-1875, 1961 (Volume 2, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• The Early Poems and the Fiction, 1963 (edited by Thomas L. Brasher)
• Prose Works, 1963-64 (2 vols., ed. F. Stoval)
• Correspondence 1876-1885, 1964 (Volume 3, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• Selected Poems and Prose, 1966 (edited by A. Norman Jeffares)
• Correspondence 1886-1889, 1969 (Volume 4, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• Correspondence 1890-1892, 1969 (Volume 5, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• The Tenderest Lover: The Erotic Poetry of Walt Whitman, 1970 (edited and with an introd. by Walter Lowenfels, illus. by J. K. Lambert)
• Walt Whitman’s Diary in Canada, with Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Note-Books, 1970 (edited by William Sloane Kennedy)
• The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman, 1973 (edited, with an introd. by Thomas B. Harned)
• Selected Poems of Walt Whitman, 1976 (edited with an introduction and notes by James Reeves and Martin Seymour-Smith)
• Daybooks and Notebooks, 1978 (3 vols., edited by William White)
• The Portable Walt Whitman, 1979 (rev. and enl. ed., selected and with notes by Mark Van Doren; revised by Malcolm Cowley, with a chronology and a bibliographical check list by Gay Wilson Allen) 
• Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose, 1982 (ed. Justin Kaplan)
• Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 1984 (6 vols., edited by Edward F. Grier)
• The Essential Whitman, 1987 (selected and with an introduction by Galway Kinnell)
• Selected Letters of Walt Whitman, 1990 (edited by Edwin Haviland Miller)
• The Journalism, 1998 (edited by Herbert Bergman, Douglas A. Noverr, Edward J. Recchia)
• Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, 2009 (edited by Jason Stacy)
• Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition, 2010 (edited by Laura Ross)
• Song of Myself, and Other Poems, 2010 (selected and introduced by Robert Hass; with a lexicon of the poem by Robert Hass and Paul Ebenkamp)
• Drum-taps: the Complete 1865 Edition, 2015 (edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Lawrence Kramer)
  
• The Sea Is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings, 2017 (edited by Jeffrey Yang)
• Leaves of Grass, 2019 (First Vintage classics edition; with an introduction by John Hollander
  
• Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman's Early Notebooks and Fragments, 2020 (edited by Zachary Turpin and Matt Miller)
  
• "The million dead, too, summ'd up": Walt Whitman's Civil War Writings, 2020 (introduction and commentary by Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill)
  
•  Walt Whitman's New Orleans: Sidewalk Sketches and Newspaper Rambles, 2022 (edited, with an introduction, by Stefan Schöberlein)
  
• Specimen Days, 2023 (published by Oxford University Press)