Walter Whitman
... Certainly one of the most unique poets to write lifes story through his own view of the world and with the ambition to do it was Walter Whitman. Greatly criticized by many readers of his work, Whitman was not a man to be deterred. ... Thus Whitman began his "Song of the Open Road". ... To know the essence of Walter Whitman, you would have to understand the heart of his writing. ... Walter Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819 . ... Whitman was one of nine children and little is known about his youth except that two of his siblings were imbeciles. ... Whitman would soon take up teaching at various schools in Long Island. ... Whitman at one time accepted a job with a New Orleans newspaper, and in doing so exposed himself to a great deal of the country. ... In short, Whitman lived trough the nations heroic age, at a time when people had to be (or seemed to be) a little more than life-size to accomplish all the deeds they undertook. It was natural that Whitman, with his genius and metaphysical inclinations, should have drifted into journalism, a profession that could make some demands on his native endowments. ... " Whitman obviously felt a kinship with his country, and later exhibited this in his writings. ... "Self-reliant, with haughty eyes, assuming to himself all the attributes of his country, steps Walt Whitman into literature, talking like a man unaware that there was ever hitherto such a production as a book, or such a being as a writer" . ... To get a decent start, Whitman even went so far as to write complimentary unsigned reviews of his book which he had placed in the newspapers- "An American bard at last! ... Whitman wrote only one book- Leaves of Grass- but he took a lifetime to write it, and he saw his one book through many shapes. As biographers have found, it is difficult to write the life of Whitman without writing instead the life and times of his book.