Voices & Visions: Walt Whitman(1988)

Voices & Visions: Walt Whitman is a documentary portrait of America's most influential poet. Whitman shattered the rules of 19th-century verse, abandoning rigid meter and formal constraints to forge a distinctly American voice. He believed democracy itself deserved poetic treatment and invented free verse as the vehicle to capture the nation's raw energy and diversity. His radical approach—treating everyday language and common people as worthy subjects—transformed American literature forever. Whitman's legacy reshaped how poets understood form, subject matter, and the very purpose of verse in a democratic society.