Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in a modest farmhouse in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, into a working-class family that embodied the restless energy and struggles of early America. He was the second of nine children born to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer of English descent who wrestled with financial instability, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, whose Dutch heritage brought a touch of earthy prac…
“But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and dead in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882, became one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century American literature. He was at once a poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, religious dissenter, and public moralist, though no single title entirely contains him. His greatest influence lay in his ability to make philosophical inquiry sound urgen…
“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace
