Walt Whitman in Pictures
Posted by ovplyouth on September 11, 2007
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has a beautiful online exhibit on Walt Whitman. The timeline of his life is told in portraits of himself and of his contemporaries. The exhibit is titled One Life: Walt Whitman, a kosmos and offers a real sense of his contributions to poetry over time as well as how he was viewed by fellow artists and intellectuals. His tendency to aggressively self promote annoyed and even angered some of his early supporters, most notably Ralph Waldo Emerson. His innovative, free verse style is widely respected and influenced many later movements in art and poetry, especially the beat poets. Please take a look at this exhibit. It is well worth a few minutes of your time.
