Whitman

Walt Whitman, the New York poet and author of Leaves of Grass, lives on in memory for his praise and exaltation of life and the senses. His poems, organic, sensual and sensory, are a true ode to nature and to one's own body. But Whitman didn't just sing and celebrate himself. In the middle of the American Civil War (1861-1865), he traveled in search of his brother and, shocked by the tremendous vision of the wounded soldiers, decided to stay to take care of them. He spent months in field hospitals providing company, writing letters for his relatives, and raising donations for wounded soldiers.