In Search of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman rises from a hardscrabble boyhood in rural Long Island and Brooklyn to write Leaves of Grass in 1855 that revolutionizes poetry. Many famous poems are profiled as the film explores the mystery of how a seemingly ordinary writer, with little education or training, could have created the literature-altering masterpiece.

The poet moves to Washington to care for sick and injured Civil War soldiers but grows disillusioned with the Gilded Age after the war. He recovers from a debilitating stroke to live out his days in Camden NJ, where he continues to write poetry. This episode includes such renowned poems as “When Lilacs Last in the Doory’d Bloomed,” “The Wound-Dresser,” and “O Captain! My Captain!”