/lit/ - Literature

>character who is white and is also a male
>name is Whitman
What the fuck??

I'm too lazy to read his wikipedia. Is anything based about him, what should i dig into?

I think Walt Whitman is a great poet. I know he doesn't write in meter or rhyme and shit and he was bisexual or whatever but I still think he's great. Here are some of my favorite from Leaves of Grass. I wish you anons well.

"Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them; and I will fill them in return.)"

“I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds
me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.”

“I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.”

“I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.”

“What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

"I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also."

And my last and most favorite for reasons I cannot fully communicate:

“Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,"

nope. go for it.
pic related didn't write anything of value until after thirty, after totally reduxing his whole style, and heavily borrowed his themes from contemporary thinkers