# Walt Whitman, Rural New Yorker

Kluge fellow Karen Karbiener delivers a lecture entitled "Walt Whitman, Rural New Yorker." A boy from rural Long Island moves to Brooklyn and, without money or mentorship, conceives, writes, and self-publishes America's declaration of cultural independence. This story remains one of the great mysteries of American literary scholarship. How did Walter Whitman - grammar school dropout and second son of a farmer-turned-carpenter - become Walt Whitman? This lecture will focus on the most obscure yet most seminal period of Whitman's life: his childhood and youth on his beloved "Paumanok," where he claims to have been born as a poet.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2010
- By: John W. Kluge Center (library Of Congress)
- Genres: History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688496/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688496?play=1)