Who was Walt Whitman?
A: Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist.
A humanist, he was a part of the transition between
what?
A: Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works.
Whitman is among the most influential poets in the
American canon, often called what?
A: The father of free verse.
His work was controversial in its time, particularly
his what?
A: His 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as
obscene for its overt sensuality.
When was Whitman born?
A: On May 31, 1819,
Where was Walter Whitman born?
A: In West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island.
Who were his parents?
A: Walter (1789–1855) and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795–1873).
The second of nine children, he was immediately
nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from what?
A: His father.
Walter Whitman Sr. named three of his seven sons after
what?
A: American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas
Jefferson.
At age four, Whitman moved with his family from West
Hills to where?
A: To Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments.
Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally
restless and unhappy, given what?
A: His family's difficult economic status.
One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was
lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by whom?
A: The Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4,
1825.
At age 11, he left formal schooling to do what?
A: To go to work.
Later, Whitman worked as a what?
A: A journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk.
Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, was
first published in 1855 with what?
A: With his own money.
The work was an attempt at what?
A: At reaching out to the common person with an American epic.
He continued expanding and revising it until what?
A: His death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington,
D.C. and did what?
A: He worked in hospitals caring for the wounded.
His poetry often focused on what?
A: Both loss and healing.
On the death of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly
admired, he wrote what?
A: His well-known poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in
the Dooryard Bloom'd".
After a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman
moved to where?
A: Camden, New Jersey, where his
health further declined.
When he died at age 72, his funeral was what?
A: A public event.
Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman what?
A: "America's poet ... He is America."