What are other important subjects for Whitman? The interconnectedness of all people – across gender, race, and even time -- especially in "Song of Myself " and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry."  This of course plays into his ideas about equality and democracy but I see shades of a more spiritual urge. In so many of his poems he refers to the similitude of human experience and assumes that readers will know exactly what he refers to. I could expand on this quite extensively.

As for Whitman’s innovations to the art of poetry, the breaking of the traditional metered line is the first obvious step. But I think his true revolution was in subject matter and voice. His fascination with “the roughs” and the personae of the Bowery B’hoy led to the creation of an anti-poet personae. A lot of critical attention has been paid to the picture of Whitman in the 1855 Leaves of Grass and how revolutionary that was in itself. The open collar, the slightly aggressive stare, the open chested stance, all this gave the original book a radical feel. The fact that the cover had no byline makes it even more innovative – as if Whitman was deconstructing the idea of authorship in the 19th Century. I could go on, but you get the idea, yes?

Of course, all of this would lend to a discussion of Whitman's evolution as a poet. But first I’d have to discuss the importance of his early trade as a printer and journalist. Karen Karbiener, out of NYU, spends a significant amount of time discussing the importance of the printing trade to his development – noting that he fell in love with words through the direct contact with language that this trade afforded him.

David Reynolds focuses significantly on journalism as the influence that led him to cast such a wide net poetically. The great poetic cataloguing of individuals from all walks of life, he argues, is a result of the intermingling Whitman did as a journalist and as a city dweller.

However, if you ask me, I think the trauma of the civil war hospitals was the defining influence in his maturation. The loftiness of the 1855 – 1860 editions of Leaves was tempered and focused by this shock.

Also, some have argued that the later editions Leaves are softer and less forceful because of Whitman’s increased conservatism in his later years. But I think the mistake is in not seeing all the versions of Leaves as one poetic collection. When you view the three volumes of NYU Press’ Textual Variorum, Leaves becomes the recorded arc of one poets birth, maturation, and death.