O Captain! My Captain!

Written by Walt Whitman

Narrated by LibriVox Community

In honor of President’s Day, LibriVox brings you thirteen versions of O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman. This classic poem was written by Whitman following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It appears in Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s masterpiece of a poetry collection and is considered by many to be one of his greatest poems. This was the LibriVox Weekly Poetry Project for the week of February 19th, 2006.
(Summary by Annie Coleman)

• 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.”