Whitman worked at various times as a printer, as a school teacher, a novelist, a newspaper editor, a building contractor, a CIvil War battlefield nurse, and a government clerk in the Department of the Interior,
Whitman was never married, and, assumed to have been a bisexual or homosexual.
Whitman continually wrote, rewrote, expanded and polished his book of poems, "Leaves of Grass" between 1855-1892. Unable to find a commercial publisher, he and his friends paid for the repeated printings.
His poems were severly criticized for their free from structure, for their liberal outlook, and for their frequent sensuality. Of his contemporaries, only Ralph Waldo Emerson lauded his work.
Whitman died in Camden, New York in the year 1892, from the after effects of a stroke.
Today, Walt Whitman is generally recognized as America's premier poet and mystical genius. A poet, journalist and essayist, Walt Whitman's eternal masterpiece "Leaves of Grass" is perhaps the most original and passionate work written by any American poet.
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O Captain! My Captain! (1865-66, 1871)(personal favourite)
To You (1860)
I Am He that Aches with Love (1860,1867)
This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful (1860,1881)
In Paths Untrodden (1860, 1867)
Whoever You Are Holding My Hand (1860, 1881)
For You O Democracy (1860, 1881)
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances (1860, 1867)
The Base of All Metaphysics (1871)
Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me? ( 1860, 1867)
