American Experience Walt Whitman

To family and friends, Walter Whitman Jr. may have been just an old bachelor but with his book, Leaves of Grass, he offered up his poetry and his persona as a reflection of the America he saw; daring, noble, naive, brutish, sexual, frightening and flawed. This film tells Whitmans life story, from his working-class childhood, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn, to his reckless pursuit of the attention he craved for his work.