Who was born 1819 in the northeast and was working at a printer’s office by the age of 12? Who began in journalism and success and turned deliberately to poetry, which he revised until his deathbed? Who lamented and crystalized a moment in history with “Oh Captain My Captain!” a poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln? Who is not often confused with Slim Whitman, the yodeling country music star whose song is best known for Mars Attack! where it makes the aliens brains explode? Walt Whitman, of course!

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

Whitman began his career in journalism in the 1840s. In 1841 he wrote “Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of The Times” a temperance novel. Whitman remarked that it was his worst book, but intended for the people and not the critics.  Nonetheless it plays to Whitman’s anti-alcohol sensibilities.  After leaving the northeast for New Orleans in 1848, Whitman was exposed to the more terrifying societal ill of slavery, and his writing would never be the same.

Influenced, both personally and literarily, by Ralph Emerson, Whitman turned to poetry. He began writing “Leaves of Grass” his most celebrated collection of poetry, in 1850 and self-published it in 1855. Whitman would continue to revise and rewrite the collection, periodically publishing new versions, until his deathbed. Elemental to Whitman’s writing is his indifference towards conventional meter and rhyme, his egalitarian worldview (and opposition to the extension of slavery), and frank sexual references. Scholars enjoy debating Whitman’s homosexuality, but one only needs to glance at his beautimus transcendental poetry to know why he has been welcomed into the American canon.