content: Walt Whitman's literary reputation has been hyped by "gay" critics (I suspect). I'm not totally hostile to free verse; in fact, I like T.S. Eliot, the most famous proponent of this genre, but Whitman wrote ramblingly, seemingly devoid of poetic coherence that the reader's creative imagination is left unstirred. I agree with Robert Frost, the truly great American poet, that writing poetry without the classic, conventional rules is like playing tennis--with no net.