Walt Whitman Poetry Collection: Leaves of Grass, Various Works and Poems, and A Complete Biography of Walt Whitman

Five works in one collection – Also available for Kindle Work 1: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Written as a compilation of poems in the mid-1800s celebrating humanity, the value of the human mind, and nature. These poems in this collection were heavily inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, himself a romantic, and the Transcendentalist Movement that was popular at the time. While most of the poems offer praise to nature and a person’s relative role in it, the title itself, Leaves of Grass, is a pun minimizing the value of the very paper that they were written on. Work 2: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman’s Letter Correspondence by Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson The very complex relationship between Emerson and Whitman was publicly displayed in open letters that they had scribed to one another. Emerson, enthusiastically welcoming Whitman to his great career, made a very public proclamation of awe-inspiring praise to the poet. Work 3: O Captain! My Captain by Walt Whitman Written about the death of President Abraham Lincoln, this poem emphasizes the grief and sorrow felt by the American people in the throes of mourning upon his assassination. The Civil War influenced Whitman’s and his poetry. Work 4: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman Written in the summer of 1865 during the country’s profound national mourning over the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, this poem was a pastoral elegy referencing the recently concluded Civil War. Whitman uses imagery and symbols to describe the president, his death, and the emotional experience. Work 5: A Complete Biography of Walt Whitman by CSA Publishing Walt Whitman, a 19th Century American journalist, and poet was considered a Unionist with many of his works, written in free verse, revolving around the events and experiences of the Civil War. His awareness of suffering, grief, and revulsion are apparent in many of his later prose and public viewpoints. His published works and collections were praised by poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson as “being of extraordinary wit and wisdom.”