“Nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms.” — Walt Whitman | V2Melody

“Nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms.”

Celebrating innovation that proceeds without noisy self-justification · Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

Art
Truth

About Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

31 May 1819–26 March 1892

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…

More by Walt Whitman

Poems by Walt Whitman

More remarks by Walt Whitman

“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

Seeing the nation and its people as a vast living work of imagination · Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

Art
Poetry

“It is as if we were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.”

Contrasting material expansion with spiritual emptiness · Essay, Democratic Vistas

“The poet shall go directly to the creation.”

Calling the poet away from unnecessary preliminaries and towards making · Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

Art
Poetry