Wikipedia:POTD column/December 5, 2006

A head-and-shoulders portrait from 1887 of Walt Whitman, widely considered to be one of America's best and most influential poets. He abandoned the rhythmic and metrical structures of European poetry for an expansionist freestyle verse, which delivered his philosophical view that America was destined to reinvent the world as emancipator and liberator of the human spirit. His most famous work is Leaves of Grass, which he self-published in 1864 and continued to edit and revise until his death. This image is said to have been Whitman's favorite from the photo session.

Photo credit: George C. Cox/Korath
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