Walt Whitman, a great poet, is said to be one of the best poets of his time. "A very lazy person with a lot of time on his hands" was what Whitman thought of himself. Though he was nothing of that sort. Whitman took his poetry seriously and everything he wrote came from his heart. In this writing I will try and explain Whitman's passion in my own words.
Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819 in Long Island, New York. Whitman grew up in poverty. He worked for many different newspapers such as, "The New York Daily Tribune" and "The New York Criterion". This worked and satisfied him for a while, then he became bored. He started writing more and more and finally wrote a book called "Leaves of Grass". This book caught everyone's attention and surprised a lot of people. Man tried to discourage him by saying the book was a disgrace to humanity and telling people to throw it in the fire, beside the fact that Abraham Lincoln loved it. In fact, so much he thought it was one of the best books he had read in a long time. Though Whitman did not show his pain and disappointment in himself, he felt it inside. He showed this in his writings only a little.
Walt's poverty inspired some of his writings. Most of them In fact. His homosexuality even inspired some of Walt's writings. One big event that inspired some of his writings was in the late 1862. Whitman went to the battle-front to find his brother George, who had been injured in Virginia. He saw a lot of cruel unkind things. He then went on to Washington to work in the government. Lincoln's death also helped him write some of his poems like "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom"d" and "O"Captain My Captain". Though his father died, he was too heart broken to write about this due to him and his father's bond. This made Walt the provider for his family and he then had to borrow $200 from a friend. James Parton, he was a husband of a famous poetess Fanny Fern.
