America's Poet

Whitman's reach is hard to overstate. Free verse became the dominant mode of English-language poetry largely because he proved it could do things rhyme and meter cannot. His honest treatment of physical experience opened doors for writers from D.H. Lawrence onward, and the Calamus poems placed queer desire at the foundation of American literature, present from its earliest great expression. A century and a half later, his lines still feel startlingly modern — proof that one self-published book can reshape a national imagination.