Many people consider Walt Whitman the father of American modern poetry. Before the 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass, a volume of poetry he would continue to revise for the rest of his life, American poetry was often judged by how well it imitated English models. Whitman rejected these models of the past. Instead, he innovated American poetry by using free verse and long, expansive lines to celebrate the diversity of America. He saw parallels between the growth of his poetry and the growth of America. Leaves of Grass grew from 12 poems in 1855 to over 400 poems by 1892, as Whitman reshaped his material over six editions and multiple reprints into a volume of poetry that he hoped would become America’s epic, capturing the freedom, diversity, and experimentation of the country, which over the course of the 19th century quickly grew with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the territories won from the Mexican American War (“California” which encompassed much of the West at the time and Florida) in 1848. Between 1800 and 1850, the area of the country increased from around 870,000 square miles to almost three million square miles and the population increases from a little over five million in 1800 to a little over 23 million in 1850.

But this growth, both poetic and national, was marked by the devastation of the Civil War. When “I Sit and Look Out” was published in the third edition of Leaves of Grass; it was 1860, a year before the Civil War began. The nation was in crisis, and the poem reflects some of the deep divisions and suffering at the time. The speaker’s long lines embrace marginalized people and their experiences, allowing them to become central. “I Sit and Look Out” is illustrative of one of Whitman’s key structural devices—it relies on the use of catalog and parallelism, a device well suited. But rather than celebrate and delight in the promise of America, the speaker in “I Sit and Look Out” despairs over the failures of America as seen in the litany of examples of various groups of people who suffer oppression, threatening the great experiment of America and art. This guide quotes the author’s use of the outdated term “negroes” as it appears in the poem’s text.

Poet Biography

Born in 1819 on a farm in Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman was the second out of a total of nine children. In 1823, his family moved to Brooklyn so that his father could have more opportunities to work as a carpenter and builder, but the father’s lack of success resulted in the family moving back to Long Island. Walt did not receive much formal education, and at the age of 11, he dropped out of school to help the family financially, working as an office boy for a lawyer and a doctor. He eventually became a printer and a teacher. He would go on to edit several Brooklyn newspapers and magazines.

In 1848, Whitman was forced to resign from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle due to his political support for the Free-Soil party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the newly acquired western territories of present-day Arizona, New Mexico, California, Texas as well as parts of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Whitman took a road trip across the country, and that exposure to the vast diversity of the country helped to reshape the direction of his life as he wanted to write in a way that would truly represent the authentic American experiences of what he witnessed. He also attended lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most famous writers of the day and a leading Transcendentalist, who called for a new American poet to emerge. This inspired Whitman to take up that call.

By the 1850s, Whitman had shifted from journalistic writing to poetry, experimenting with the use of long lines of free verse. In 1855, he self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, containing a preface and 12 poems, each poem titled “Leaves of Grass.” Whitman sent copies to the leading writers of the day, and Emerson wrote back, praising his work by saying that he saw great promise in Leaves of Grass, recognizing a new artistic voice for America. However, many critics denounced the book, especially for its sexual content. Whitman would continue to work on the same book for the rest of his life, reorganizing and creating new content, exploding boundaries and traditions as he sought to capture the uniquely American experiences and rhythms of life that he loved.

Despite his controversial content, Whitman was able to publish a second edition in 1856 with 32 poems (now with individual titles). Whitman also included Emerson’s letter (without asking for permission) in his book as he knew that this would help promote acceptance of his book. In 1860, he published the third edition of Leaves of Grass, which contained 124 new poems, including the poem “I Sit and Look Out.”

From 1863-1865 Whitman worked as a nurse during the Civil War, tending to wounded soldiers in Washington, D.C. During this time, he witnessed Lincoln’s second inauguration and, when Lincoln was assassinated, he wrote the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” in memory of Lincoln. (It was published in a Civil War collection of poetry called Drum-Taps in 1865.) After the war, he worked with the Department of the Interior until Secretary James Harland discovered he was the author of Leaves, which Harlan found indecent. The journalist William O’Connor, a friend of Whitman and editor of The Saturday Evening Post, defended Whitman against the charges of obscenity, eventually writing a biography of Whitman, The Good Gray Poet (1866). O’Connor’s defense helped to change Whitman’s reputation and make him more acceptable to the reading public.

In 1867, the fourth edition of Leaves of Grass was published, in which Whitman had reshaped the material to include his Civil War poetry and prose. He continued to revise and add new poems, as well as reshuffle the order of his poems, eventually publishing a fifth edition in 1871.

In 1873, Whitman had a stroke and moved to Camden, New Jersey, with his brother George, where he continued to work on poems for Leaves. A sixth edition was published in 1881, and in 1892, Whitman published a final authorized edition, also referred to as the “deathbed edition.” The original 12 poems of Leaves of Grass had expanded to nearly 400 poems by the final edition. Whitman died on March 26, 1892.

Poem Text

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all

oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with

themselves, remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,

neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous

seducer of young women,

I mark the rankings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to

be hid, I see these sights on the earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and

prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who

shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons

upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these—all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look

out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

Whitman, Walt. “I Sit and Look Out.” 1871. The Walt Whitman Archive.

Summary

In Whitman’s “I Sit and Look Out,” the speaker catalogs the various injustices and sorrows that he sees in the world around him. Almost every line begins with “I” followed by a verb such as “see,” “mark,” or “observe.” The first misery listed is a general sense of sadness over the state of the world: “I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame” (Line 1). The second misery focuses on young men who are suffering “secret convulsive sobs” for some unnamed act that they are “remorseful” for (Line 2). The third misery is the “mother misused by her children,” suggesting that the children have now grown up and have abandoned their mother who now suffers alone (Line 3). The fourth misery is women who have been abandoned by either their husbands or a “treacherous seducer” (Line 4).

The fifth misery becomes general again as it focuses on those who suffer from “unrequited love” (Line 5). The sixth misery is those who suffer from “battle, pestilence, tyranny” (Line 6). The seventh misery is sailors who have become desperate at sea and must determine “who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest” (Line 7). The eighth misery is those who are oppressed by the “arrogant,” who use their power against the “laborers, the poor, and upon negroes” (Line 8). The ninth misery listed is again marking a general sense of misery, “all the meanness and agony without end” (Line 9). The final line, the shortest line of the poem, shifts away from the miseries suffered by others to focus on the speaker, marking his ability to see the pain of the world. The role of the speaker (ironically) seems to be a contradiction: He claims he is “silent” (Line 10), but his verses refuse silence and insist on being heard.