Whitman is considered the greatest American poet for his work Leaves of Grass, which he published at his own expense in 1855 and which he constantly revised and expanded in the nine editions that were published during his lifetime. This work began to have a considerable readership after its 1881 edition. Whitman's poetry was controversial from the beginning. Emerson praised it, but the press generally attacked it furiously, considering it scandalous in both form and content; nevertheless, it became Whitman's life's work. The main novelty of this poetry is the versification, not used until then, which moved away from the sentimentalism used by the author in earlier poems. In this work, the human body is praised, which his contemporaries considered obscene; the enjoyment of the senses is glorified; it seeks both sensual pleasure and brotherhood. He used more direct terms from the popular language, freeing poetry from all conventionalism in terms of form and language; with this Whitman welcomed the arrival of a new democratic literature "in accord with the people", simple and irreducible, sometimes crude, written by a powerful and heroic affectionate poet, who leads his readers with a magnetic force, because unlike other great modern writers, he was susceptible to being felt.