Prologue
Walt Whitman


By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was developing a distinctive artistic and cultural identity, one rooted in the specific conditions and history of American life. American poetry grew in technical sophistication, and with Walt Whitman it broke the shackles of literary gentility to create a language that expressed the fullness of American democracy.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Whitman and then Ezra Pound had created a platform on which subsequent writers would create quintessentially modern verse: bright, linguistically innovative and above all engaged with the tumultuous, energetic society of which they were an essential part.

Throughout, there was a close link between poetry and artists, the two arts intertwining to create modernist culture. Poetic Likeness is a record of that partnership, putting a face to the distinctive voices of American poetry.


This exhibition has been made possible through the generosity of the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Charitable Trust, Amy and Marc Meadows, and Catherine V. Dawson.

National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution

October 12, 2012
through April 28, 2013



Banner images:
Walt Whitman (detail) / Frank E. Pearsall / Albumen silver print, 1872 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Marianne Moore (detail) / George Platt Lynes / Gelatin silver print, 1935/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / © Estate of George Platt Lynes
Sylvia Plath (detail cropping) / Photograph by Rollie McKenna / Gelatin silver print, 1959 (printed later) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Rollie McKenna / © Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona Foundation
John Ashbery (detail) / Peter Hujar / Gelatin Silver Print, 1975 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Elizabeth Ann Hylton / © Estate of Peter Hujar
Elizabeth Bishop (detail cropping) / Photograph by Rollie McKenna / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Rollie McKenna / © Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona Foundation