A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Walt Whitman

1881

Introduction

A Noiseless Patient Spider, by the nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman, was first published in 1868 in the Broadway: A London Magazine. Whitman then included the poem in slightly altered form in the fifth edition of his Leaves of Grass in 1871. The poem reached its final form in that volume's seventh edition, published in 1881. A Noiseless Patient Spider is a short, free-verse poem in two stanzas that uses Whitman's observation of the activity of a spider as an opportunity to examine the activity of the poet's soul. Like a spider spinning its web from within itself, the isolated soul tries to project from within itself something that will enable it to connect with the rest of the universe. The poem may also be interpreted as being about loneliness, about death and the hope for eternal life, or about artistic creativity. Whitman is one of the great American poets, and this poem is an accessible introduction to his style—free verse and long poetic lines—and many of his typical thematic concerns.

Author Biography

One of the greatest American poets, Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, a village near Huntington, on Long Island, New York. His father, Walter Whitman, was a farmer and carpenter with little education. When Whitman was three, the family moved to Brooklyn, where his father speculated unsuccessfully in real estate. Whitman attended school in Brooklyn for six years and then at the age of eleven worked as an office boy in a legal firm. He continued to educate himself by reading in the library, including authors such as Sir Walter Scott