華特·惠特曼（英語：Walter Whitman，1819年5月31日－1892年3月26日），美國詩人、散文家、新聞工作者及人文主義者。他身處於超驗主義與現實主義間的變革時期，著作兼併了二者的文風。惠特曼是美國文壇中最偉大的詩人之一，有自由詩之父美譽[1]。他的文作在當代實具爭議性，尤其是他的著名詩集《草葉集》，曾因其對性的大膽描述而被歸為淫穢。
出生於長島，惠特曼除了文學創作之外，也從事記者、教師、政府文書等職，並曾於美國內戰期間志願擔任護士。他也曾在創作生涯初期發行過禁酒小說《富蘭克林·伊凡》 (1842)。惠特曼的重要著作《草葉集》則是於1855年自費出版，嘗試着讓普羅大眾接觸美國史詩，直至1892年逝世之前仍不斷增著、刪修該著作。在晚年的一次中風後，他遷居至新澤西州的肯頓，病情並在當地持續惡化。惠特曼以72歲高齡辭世，他的葬禮隨後以公開方式舉行，出席者眾多、景象壯觀[2][3]。
To the Battlefield
With the nation now locked in an extended war, all of Whitman’s deepest concerns and beliefs were under attack. Leaves of Grass had been built on a faith in union, wholeness, the ability of a self and a nation to contain contradictions and absorb diversity; now the United States had come apart, and Whitman’s very project was now in danger of becoming an anachronism as the Southern states sought to divide the country in two. Leaves had been built, too, on a belief in the power of affection to overcome division and competition; his Calamus vision was of a "continent indissoluble" with "inseparable cities" all joined by "the life-long love of comrades." But now the young men of America were killing each other in bloody battles; fathers were killing sons, sons fathers, brothers brothers. Whitman’s prospects for his "new Bible" that would bind a nation, build an affectionate democracy, and guide a citizenry to celebrate its unified diversity, were shattered in the fratricidal conflict that engulfed America.
New Orleans Sojourn
Fortunately, on February 9, 1846, Whitman met, between acts of a performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York, J. E. McClure, who intended to launch a New Orleans paper, the Crescent, with an associate, A. H. Hayes. In a stunningly short time—reportedly in fifteen minutes—McClure struck a deal with Whitman and provided him with an advance to cover his travel expenses to New Orleans. Whitman’s younger brother Jeff , then only fifteen years old, decided to travel with Walt and work as an office boy on the paper. The journey—by train, steamboat, and stagecoach—widened Walt’s sense of the country’s scope and diversity, as he left the New York City and Long Island area for the first time. Once in New Orleans, Walt did not have the famous New Orleans romance with a beautiful Creole woman, a relationship first imagined by the biographer Henry Bryan Binns and further elaborated by others who were charmed by the city’s exoticism and who were eager to identify heterosexual desires in the poet. The published versions of his New Orleans poem called "Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City" seem to recount a romance with a woman, though the original manuscript reveals that he initially wrote with a male lover in mind.
哦，船長，我的船長！
哦，船長，我的船長！我們險惡的航程已經告終，
什麼樣的女孩適合長期交往？
最美麗的一種飛翔
黑夜被釋放
