Walt Whitman began work in printing, teaching, and journalism before becoming known as a poet. He edited newspapers and participated in debates over politics, labor, and national identity. In 1855 he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense, presenting poems that departed from conventional rhyme and meter. Ralph Waldo Emerson's praise encouraged him, while the book's frank treatment of bodies and sexuality troubled other readers. Whitman continued revising, enlarging, and rearranging it throughout his career.

His poetry developed an expansive speaking voice that linked personal experience with democratic life and the physical world. Collections and clusters such as Children of Adam and Calamus explored desire and attachment in ways that challenged prevailing expectations. His literary claims to inclusiveness coexisted with racial attitudes and political judgments that were limited and sometimes prejudiced. The democratic aspirations of the poems should therefore not be assumed to describe an equally inclusive position in every aspect of his public life.

During the Civil War Whitman traveled to Virginia after his brother was wounded and then remained in Washington. He worked in federal offices and visited wounded soldiers in hospitals, providing companionship, writing letters, and bringing small necessities. These experiences informed Drum-Taps and his prose recollections of the war. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination he wrote the contrasting elegies O Captain! My Captain! and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. In 1865 he lost a position at the Interior Department when his poetry offended the secretary, but obtained another government post.

A stroke in 1873 led Whitman to move to Camden, New Jersey. He continued writing and receiving visitors while supporters helped manage publications and finances. Democratic Vistas, Specimen Days, and later poems extended his reflections on national culture, memory, and ordinary experience. The final authorized version of Leaves of Grass, often called the deathbed edition, appeared shortly before his death in 1892. His career made continual revision of one major poetic project a distinctive form of authorship. He influenced later writers through long lines, varied rhythms, direct address, and an effort to find poetic significance in common life. That literary achievement remains open to critical examination of the exclusions and contradictions within his vision of American democracy.