Whitman, Walt

(May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist.  "Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse" (2) He was a humanist; and as a poet, fell between the transcendentalist and realist movements, straddling that line in his poetry.
==Whitman and Stevens==
Responding to a letter from Mr. Joseph Bennett in 1955, Stevens wrote that he had read some Whitman for a few hours before writing back and believed that Whitman "remains highly vital to many people.  The poes in which he collects large numbers of concrete things, particularly things each of which is poetic in itself or as a part of a collection, have a validity which, for many people, must be enough and must seem to them all opulence and elan."
He continues, "It is useless to treat everything in Whitman as of equal merit."  "The good things, the superbly beautiful and moving things, are those that he wrote naturally, with an extemporaneous and irrepressible vehemence of emotion."
==References==
#Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. Berkley: University of California Press,           1996. 870-871. Print.
#Walt Whitman