Seer, prophet, visionary, preacher, Walt Whitman stands out as one of poetry's towering anomalies: in celebrating the trees, water, sky and air, the bear, the eagle, the buffalo and the lion, Whitman expressed a uniquely democratic vision that engulfs not only the American continent but the entire universe. His passionate vehemence, his faith in the common man, and his unflinching pursuit of the t...