Originally published in 1904 and republished by City Lights in 1970, this exciting essay is again being placed in the hands of a new generation of writers and readers. In these notes to a lecture never given, Whitman exhorts his readers to explore the potential of an original American language, to practice a great democracy of words: words that would be welcomed by the nation, being of the national blood–words that would give that taste of identity and locality which is so dear to literature.