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
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them
I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.
The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.
Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.
I loafe and invite my soul.
Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs.
If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.
Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.