Walt Whitman

Questions:
Who is/was Walt Whitman ?
What type of literature did he write?
Is he a realist or romanticist? Why?

Walt Whitman was an American poet and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets and is often referred to as the father of free verse, (a type of poetry.)
The type of literature he wrote was poetry, journalism, and essayist. However, he was one of the first poets to write in what is called free verse. This is the reason he is called the "father" of this style of literature. Leaves of Grass was a very famous, self-published poem.
Walt Whitman is a romanticist because he had originality over virtuosity, he had imagination over intellect and he had feeling over formality. Walt Whitman was a romanticist, but within romanticism he also developed and new form of it, mentioned earlier, free verse.