Walt Whitman wrote that he is “the poet of the Body and the poet of the Soul,” which is the basis for many things that inspired him to write, such as life, death, love, God, and war. He was inspired by the Opera, “he would later say that without the ‘emotions, raptures, uplifts’ of the Opera he could never have written Leaves of Grass. For him Leaves of Grass was an organic creation responsive to the fluctuations of his life.”
Whitman’s writing was based on the people in his life as he writes in Song of Myself: “People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live, or the nation.” He wrote about his loneliness and his admiration of other people in his work Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: “Crowd of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!” Whitman believed that all people were equal: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” He shares his joy at being connected to something like humanity when he writes: "And that all men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers.”
Walt Whitman’s life was very affected by the Civil War. He was very involved in turning “his attention to the wounded,” because he believed actions speak louder than words: “Writing and talk do not prove me.” He shows how he was affected by it, by writing: “the dead, the dead, the dead, our dead.” He writes about death with a surreal reaction: “The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor to the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, and I note where the pistol has fallen.”
Whitman mentions his beliefs on the subject of God: “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.” Whitman seemed confused about the reason he was on the earth: “A child said 'What is the grass?' How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. And what is the reason? And what is love? And what is life?” Even though he has questions, he’s come to a place of peace with it, writing: “I exist as I am, that is enough.”
Whitman believed in following your natural instincts: “I think I could turn and live with animals, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.” “During the late 1850s Whitman wrote a group of twelve poems, ‘Live Oak, with Moss,’ that seems to recount his passionate love for another man. His writing was very controversial at the time and he even was fired by James Harlan, because he objected “to Whitman’s frankness about bodily functions and heterosexual love.”
Whitman wrote of the importance of having your own voice: “My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach; with the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.” He “experimented with form and prosody” wanting to make himself unique to other poets who came before him. Whitman emphasizes his belief in free will when he writes: “The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, or as small as we like, or both great and small.” He wrote pieces he though the world needed to hear: “my words itch at your ears till you understand them.”
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