Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitmanwas an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A 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. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 May 1819
CountryUnited States of America
I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy
Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God, The loving Laborer through space and time
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.
Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.
Give me such shows - give me the streets of Manhattan!
I am not contain'd between my hat and boots.
The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.
Me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature.
A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.
Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of a man.