Walt Whitman was the first major poet to create a truly American vision and style. His extraordinary example gave American verse much of its subsequent character and diction. Rejecting traditional constraints of form and subject matter, Whitman considered democracy itself appropriate grist for his own poetic mill, inventing a radically different sort of free verse to express what he had to say.

Cast

Peter MacNicol

Narrator

Louis Turenne

Walt Whitman

Allen Ginsberg

Self

Galway Kinnel

The Voice of the Poet