The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Whitman, Walt. “Miracles” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/miracles.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Walt Whitman was an American poet and writer born in 1819 in Huntington, Long Island, though for most of his childhood and his later career, Whitman lived in Brooklyn, only moving to Camden, New Jersey at the end of his life. As such, unsurprisingly, the urbanity of Whitman’s surroundings has found its way into his work – poems like “Mannahatta” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” specifically reference the subject of New York City in their titles. However, Whitman is perhaps better known for his influence on Transcendentalism, an artistic and cultural movement originating in the United States interested in individualism and the experience of selfhood and wonder within the realm of the natural world away from society. After all, many of Whitman’s poems, including “Miracles,” is filled with natural imagery and Whitman’s lyrical experience of observing and living within nature; as an alternative to organized religion, Whitman is often brought to revelatory heights as a result of his own contemplative wonder in his poems.

Today, Whitman is best known for the 1855 poetry collection, Leaves of Grass. In addition to espousing much of his Transcendental philosophy by taking as its main subject Whitman’s own idealized body in the natural and material world, the collection was criticized by many of his contemporary critics for the accompanying explicit descriptions of sexual experience. While notable for its content, Leaves of Grass is also known for its implementation of the innovations in poetic form Whitman used in works such as “Miracles” – Whitman is famous for popularizing free verse, poetry that throws off conventional forms and patterns of rhyme and meter for lyric that is more similar to the free-flowing nature of daily speech. Also worth noting is the organic nature of Leaves of Grass: Whitman was not only interested in the inspiring organicism of nature but the organic potential of his poetry collection, which he rewrote and expanded into several editions until his death in 1892.

Whitman is also known for the role he played during the Civil War tending to those wounded on the battlefield. As a result, many of Whitman’s poems carry themes of healing and loss, especially those written in the immediate aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination: “O Captain! My Captain” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" are two examples. For these nationalistic themes, his founding contributions to Transcendentalism, and his use of vernacular in poetry, Whitman is often credited for creating a uniquely American poetic and epic voice.

As a general note, poetic convention means that the speaker of a poem should not be conflated with the voice and views of the author of a poem. However, Whitman’s intensely lyrical focus on his own personal experiences in the first-person within his poetry poses an arguable exception to this rule. Therefore, throughout this study guide, the speaker of the poem will be referred to as “Whitman” rather than as “the speaker.”