Walt Whitman rises from a hardscrabble boyhood in Long Island and Brooklyn to write the masterpiece Leaves of Grass in 1855 that revolutionizes literature. Many of his most famous poems are profiled.

The poet moves to Washington to care for injured Civil War soldiers but is disillusioned by 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.