A Prairie Sunset

Written by Walt Whitman

Narrated by LibriVox Community

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of A Prairie Sunset by Walt Whitman. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 28, 2011.

Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "poet of democracy", a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman, Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." (summary from Wikipedia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American writer famously known for his poetry collection, Leaves of Grass. In addition to his poetry, Whitman was also a prominent essayist, journalist, and humanist with works centering mainly around the topics of transcendentalism and realism. Born in New York in 1819, Whitman worked at a printing press where he then transitioned to a full-time journalist. During his time in journalism, Whitman developed many important beliefs, many of them formed after having witnessed the auctioning of enslaved individuals. Over the course of his career, Whitman remained very politically aware, disavowing the bloody nature of the Civil War and dedicating resources to help the wounded in various hospitals in New York City. Whitman spent his declining years working on revisions for Leaves of Grass, which was largely thereafter referred to as his “Deathbed Edition.”