I can only guess at the answer, but here goes. You've already noted the episode titled Gilding Over All is a reference to <PERSON>, and has the line many deaths I'll sing.
It is no coincidence that both <PERSON> and <PERSON> share the same first name. Even their surnames are basically the same: <PERSON> and <PERSON> (White man).
<PERSON> was one of America's most influential poets - a great in his field. He was obsessed with his work Leaves of Grass and was constantly revising it. The work was not easily accepted because of it's celebration of self and sensuality - the editors asked <PERSON> to sensor his work, but he would not - just as <PERSON> was obsessed with creating the greatest meth possible - his life's work - and his work would also be frowned upon by less enlightened people than himself.
<PERSON> and <PERSON> were both brilliant chemists; indeed <PERSON> would have been recognized as such by his success with Gray Matter if he had not acted so rashly/impulsively by walking away from it in a huff. It is an insight into <PERSON>'s arrogance that he never takes responsibility for this act, instead nourishing this grudge throughout the entire series. <PERSON> thinks of himself as being a world-class brilliant man cut down by chance (not his own flaw) to his lowly position as a high school chemistry teacher.
When <PERSON> and <PERSON> first meet, <PERSON> is already aware of <PERSON>'s brilliance, and they discuss their pure love of chemistry. We know why <PERSON> is in the meth buisness; <PERSON> explains,
“I was on my way—jumping through hoops, kissing the proper behinds, attending to all the non-chemistry that one finds oneself occupied with. You know that world. That is not what I signed on for. I love the lab—because it’s all still magic, you know? Chemistry? I mean, once you lose that….”
And <PERSON> agrees with him. 417
They have a moment where they agree with <PERSON> that the purity of what they love had been spoiled for them. For <PERSON>, this was a declaration of disillusionment with convention and of liberation. So, too, are <PERSON> and <PERSON> liberated from the lecture room (class room for <PERSON>, academia for <PERSON>) and convention.
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer... in the lectureroom,
How soon... I became tired and sick;
Till... I wander’d off by myself...
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
<PERSON> is accepting of <PERSON>'s obvious great admiration verging on adulation as if it were his due. It is with some of this stardust in his own eyes that he purchases a copy (paperback) shortly afterwards and reads it himself. Perhaps <PERSON> liked <PERSON> celebration of himself that occurs in I Sing the Body Electric and other poems in Leaves of Grass. Though it is never explained, I think <PERSON> sees himself in <PERSON>. It doesn't hurt that two of the poems in Leaves of Grass were mourning the death of the great president, <PERSON>. One might even go so far as to say that to <PERSON>, he with the insufferable ego and self-deception) himself believes he is a great man who will deserve to be mourned when he dies (of cancer). 417