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Walt Whitman is often called "the first American national poet". A century after his death his person and his poetry continues to be a controversial subject.
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Huntington town, Long Island. His mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was of Dutch decent and Quaker faith. His father of English lineage, was a carpenter and builder of houses, and a stern disciplinarian. When he was four, the family moved to Brooklyn where he would receive all his formal education.
Walt, the second of nine children, was withdrawn from public school at the age of eleven to help support the family. At the age of twelve he started to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written and printed word. He read voraciously, and became acquainted with all the classics early in life.
In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as an innovative teacher in the one-room schoolhouses of Long Island. He permitted his students to call him by his first name, and devised learning games for them in arithmetic and spelling. He continued to teach school until 1841, when
he turned to journalism.
Over the next few years, Whitman would take a
number of positions at variousBrooklyn and Manhattan newspapers, all the while publishing
occasional poems and stories. In 1848 he went to New Orleans, writing for "New Orleans
Crescent" but he soon returned to New York City. From 1851 till the publication of the first
edition of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, Whitman was working as a carpenter in Brooklyn. It was
during this period he developed the style of poetry for which he was later to become
famous.