Walt Whitman
1819 – 1892 American poet
The father of free verse and America's poet of democracy.
- Religion
- A freethinker of no church, whose poetry expresses a mystical, pantheistic sense of the sacredness of all life.
- Affiliations
- None.
Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass, a sprawling book of free verse that celebrated the body, democracy, and the common person. He broke poetry free of traditional meter and rhyme. His expansive, inclusive voice shaped modern American literature.