"Whitman discouraged aspiring poets" because ". . . there is no particular need of poetic expression. We are utilitarian and the current cannot be stopped." Thus in an interview published in 1888. Perhaps it hasn't, that current. Though that probably shouldn't discourage aspiring poets, even now when poetry has been marginalized and trivialized in ways even Whitman could not have foreseen. Still, he had some other words of wisdom, both idealistic and practical, for aspiring writers and may have merely been throwing down a challenge to his interviewers. I'd like to read the original college newspaper piece.