Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, and is widely regarded as the father of free verse and one of the defining voices of American literature. His landmark collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised across nine editions, contains Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric, and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, his elegy for Abraham Lincoln. He worked as a journalist, essayist, and government clerk, and volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War — an experience that deeply shaped his later poetry. His embrace of the body, democracy, and multitudinous selfhood transformed American poetry.