The Life and Works of Walt Whitman :: Biography

Poets write various styles of poetry. They use their own personal experiences, ideas, and creativity. Walt Whitman used all of these styles in his writings. He had experienced trials and tribulations throughout his whole life. Whitman did a lot of moving during his childhood, and that probably caused his personality to be neurotic. There are a lot of things that he has do to change the writings of future poets.Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman and Louisa Van Velsor. His father was a house builder. The family consisted of nine children (Whitman 1). The Whitmans moved to Brooklyn when Walt was only four years old (334). When he was only twelve years old, he began to learn the newspapermans trade and he fell in love with the written word, and became accustomed to reading the bible (para. 2).He did not have a formal education, and he read the works if Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante (Feldman 438). Whi tman had worked as a printer in New York City until a fire annihilated the printing district where he was operative at. When he turned 17 years old, he became a teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. Whitman continued to teach until 1841, he turned to news media and this became his full-time career (Whitman para. 3). Whitman founded a newspaper called, The Long Islander, and later on he edited numerous of Brooklyn and New York newspapers. He left Brooklyns, The Daily Eagle, to aim the editor of the New Orleans Crescent. He experienced first hand the cruelness of slavery in the slave markets of New Orleans. When he returned to Brooklyn, he found the Brooklyn Freeman and he started to develop a unique style of poetry (Whitman para. 4).Whitman had a unique sense of writing styles. muckle say that he had an original style of writing of Hebrew poetry and is based on the device of parallelism. Whitmans poetry contained elements of repetition (Unger 332). His character istics also had a lot to do with his writings. People say that in his own way that he was an intellectual, and was a highly unorthodox poet. He had a neurotic side. They described him as a diversify bisexual, quirky, elusive, and power-seeking (332). Whitmans sexuality had some influence on his writings. He had some difficulty with his sexuality.