Walt Whitman Biography

Walt Whitman is a famous American poet. Walt Whitman was inspired to write poems about the Civil War and changed his style of writing after experiencing the horrible result of the war. He was worried the war was going to break the nation apart. Before the War had started Whitman had written some amazing poetry like “Leaves of Grass,” for example. He had also published many different versions of a book that had man different types of poetry within it. A lot of his writing came from his fears and thoughts of the war. Also a lot of his poems had to do with the war and a lot of them revolve around the change that was going on to not judge people. Another part of the war that has shown up into Whitman’s writing is the experience he has had while he was working with soldiers in the hospitals. After the war Whitman’s poetry got more detailed and interesting, some of the works that he had done …show more content…
This book of poems consisted of 12 different poems. When the book first came out the only good review that it had was from Ralph Waldo Emerson, but other than Emerson the book did not have a lot of reviews and did not sell well. A lot of the critics in New York City did not like Whitman’s poetry because it was not like the rest of the writers poems, Whitman usually wrote about “common people, such as mechanics, shoemakers, boatmen, and carpenters. Some critics felt that such ordinary subjects were not suitable for poetry.” (Countryman) Although a lot of the critics said that about Whitman’s poems, one of places that the book got a lot of reviews was in the New York papers. Also when the book first came out the publishers did not print more than seven hundred ninety five copies because that is all Whitman could afford at that time. Whitman kept publishing books and each one had more and more poems in the