CONSIDER him sensational, mystical, erotic, and expansive; consider him the good gray poet, the moral crusader, the prophet of democracy and the enemy of social injustice; or consider him libertarian, unsavory, and controversial. However we may view Walt Whitman, there is no denying his genius. Has there ever been a poet--before or after--so central, so vital to the heartbeat and life of American, and world, poetry? Answering the challenge that Whitman issued nearly a hundred and fifty years ago in "Poets to Come, " Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro have gathered one hundred poems by one hundred poets bearing witness to Whitman's great inheritance. Poets as diverse as Sherman Alexie, Sharon Olds, Langston Hughes, Anne Waldman, Pablo Neruda, and Erica Jong fill the pages of Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman and, in true Whitman tradition, form a democratic chorus of celebration and homage to the undeniable resonance of the poet's spirit. Visiting Walt is a reminder and a renewal, at the dawn of a new millennium, of the centrality of Whitman's influence on American and global literature. As Ed Folsom poignantly remarks in his foreword, "Here are a hundred poems that read Whitman's poems in a hundred different ways, that remake Whitman again and again, that answer what he is for."