And I think it’s fitting that the epic he creates is almost a self portrait. No matter how much Whitman tries to write of the host of the nation and its myriad components, he can’t help evoking the facts around his own life. A Long Island-born man who wandered the nineteenth century states looking for a way to sing himself into the world, compassionately considering everything taken into his mind’s lens. It takes an exercise in almost alien empathy to create a ballad of the time that considers all parts so fairly and so artfully. This is a man who nursed soldiers on both sides back to health during the Civil War. This is a man who wanted the blue collar people that represent this country to enjoy his poetry more than the dandies that ended up comprising its audience. It’s a man who lived before there was a Brooklyn bridge or an Empire State Building, but who showed us that at the end of the day Long Island doesn’t look like a fish any less now than it did while he sat on its shores.