Walter Whitman (Walt Whitman) is the best answer for your question, for he spent is boyhood at Brooklyn and New York. Worked at a printing office, taught at a school, writing stories, and editing newspapers were his experiences during his teenager years. His most transcendental poems were "Song to Myself", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and lastly "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".