Walt Whitman looked to many different areas of American culture to develop a distinctively American poetry. Scholar Ed Folsom investigates four of the areas Whitman found most fertile for his own poetic development the evolution of American dictionaries, the growth of the national sport of baseball, the decimation of American Indians, and the development of American photography. Illus.

Preface: Walt Whitman and ...; Acknowledgements; Introduction: 'Wording the future'; 1. Whitman and dictionaries; 2. Whitman and baseball; 3. Whitman and American Indians; 4. Whitman and photography; 5. Whitman and photographs of the self.