Creating a Chapbook. Initial Ideas

I like poetry very much. That's why I decided that I would try to write a small first dose my poetry. My first research was the poetry of Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman is a poet born in USA in 1819 in New York state. He spent the first years of his life on Long Island. He had no higher educations, but was teacher, editor and reporter. During the Civil War he worked for government and helped soldiers when they were sick and disabled. He died in 1892 in New Jersey. His poetry was not well received in his country, but was well received in England. He wrot collection of poems titled ,,Leaves of Grass". (Allen&Jeffares, 2024)

In his work he wrote poems about love, nature, friendship, democratic ideas, sexuality and touched very much the topic of the soul and feelings. Critics said his poems wer disturbing. The Poetry Foundation has a quote from The Longman Anthology of Poetry: ,,Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons: this openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations". And more about his style and technique poetry:,, abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns."(Poetry Foundation, no date) 

                                           Photo by Library of Congress, Walt Whitman

I found poem on the Fourteen Lines website, beautiful and disturbing. I have information from poem, Whitman wrote when he was 40 years, and he is speaking to reader. Whitman has been dead for 130 years, and when I read poem I feel how close he is to me. 

Full of life, now.

Full of life, now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries
hence,
To you, yet unborn, these seeking you.

When you read these, I, that was visible, am become
invisible;
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems,
seeking me;
Fancying how happy you (are), if I could be with you,
and become your loving comrade;
Be it, as if I were with you. Be not too certain, but I
am now with you.

I think its good poem to motivate me to work, maybe someone will read my poem one day.

References:

Allen, G. and Jeffares, A. (2024) Walt Whitman, Britannica (online), Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walt-Whitman [Accessed, 11 Feb. 2024]

Fourteen Lines (2018), Full of Life, Now (online), Fourteen Lines - a Sonnet Obsession, Available at: https://fourteenlines.blog/2018/04/03/full-of-life-now/ [Accessed, 11 Feb. 2024]

Poetry Foundation, Walt Whitman, (online) Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/walt-whitman#:~:text=According%20to%20The%20Longman%20Anthology,and%20rhyme%20patterns%E2%80%9D%20of%20his [Accessed, 11 Feb. 2024]