The Collected Poems of Walt Whitman

by Walt Whitman

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.

Genres: Poetry

Kindle Edition

About the author

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."

Reviews

[ZaRi]

A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

[Adam Sarlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considered to be the “Great American Poet”, Walt Whitman’s poetry studies themes of liberty, freedom of expression, death, and a connection with the nature world in his works. To Whitman, a newly formed America needed formless poetry and literature to promote expression, sexuality, and inclusivity, and makes the argument in his works that without everyone coming together and living in peace and harmony, we are no better than those brutal and evil rulers who came before us, and not a true nation at all.