Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast.

Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman.

Why do I love Walt Whitman, the American poet of the late 19th century?

It's a tricky one.

I love his supreme confidence.

He's like a sort of a laid back prophet.

I don't know if you're familiar with the prophets in the Bible,

but they tend to be fairly proactive, fairly dominant figures.

Whitman seems to have all the know-how, but he's easy with it.

He's reclining in his wisdom, in his sagacity.

He's a sort of a super poet as well.

When I say here, my main voice of his poems is this.

It's sort of like a prophet, like a visionary, like a super poet,

but also like an ordinary working class bloke.

You know that pub philosopher that people always talk about?

Oh, the pub philosopher that bloke in the corner of the pub

with these words of wisdom, which are usually just banal truisms.

But imagine if there was a genuine genius just in like overalls sitting in the corner of the pub,

it would be Whitman.

OK, I want to give you an example of his confidence.

By reading to you a short, just a stanza from a poem of his called Poets to Come,

in which he addresses future poets, who he sees very much again,

...