Happy Days, Walt!

And what a grand 195 years it has been! Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman...you sweet, dear old man. I love you.

"To A Stranger"

by Walt Whitman

Passing stranger! you do not know

How longingly I look upon you,

You must be he I was seeking,

Or she I was seeking

(It comes to me as a dream)

I have somewhere surely

Lived a life of joy with you,

All is recall'd as we flit by each other,

Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me,

Were a boy with me or a girl with me,

I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become

not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,

face, flesh as we pass,

You take of my beard, breast, hands,

in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you

when I sit alone or wake at night, alone

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

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narcissist.

Look at them....posing like that. It's all about them. "Take my picture, Jeff...look how pretty I am!" Narcissists.

"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed,..."

- excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun"

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"Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here".

It's true when they say that the simplest things in life sometimes bring us the most joy.

"Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here"
By Walt Whitman

Soon shall the winter's foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt—A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth—a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears—all thy best attributes—all that takes
cognizance of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early
scents and flowers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow's yellow-green,
the blossom- ing plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their
songs—the flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.

(Video shot at Good Hope Cemetery in Greenfield, Wisconsin)

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Happy Veterans Day.

To my father - all those who have served - thank you. The poet Walt Whitman wrote extensively on the Civil War. Here is an excerpt:

"O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love."

from "Dirge for Two Veterans", Drumtaps, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

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december 1. frozen.

"Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;

Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt — A little while..."

excerpt from, "Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here",
by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1888.

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leaves + water + porcelain bucket.

"Memories"

How sweet the silent backward tracings!

The wanderings as in dreams - the meditation of old times resumed - their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1891-92

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Happy Birthday, Jeff!

It's my birthday today. 2:34 p.m. 1964. Some years I get into it and some years it's just another day. That's me 46 years ago. Now that's a good lookin' kid, come on. Listen to my "happy song" here.

There was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day,
or a certain part of the day,
or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

- excerpt from Walt Whitmans "There Was A Child Went Forth", from Leaves of Grass (1891-1892)

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We're not done with you, Summer....

"Continuities" 

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.

Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;

Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.

Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.

The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier

fires,

The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;

The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons

continual;

To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,

With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

- by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1891-91 edition

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Happy Birthday, Mom!

"I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of

its mother, The sleeping mother and babe -

hush'd, I study them long and long."

- "Mother and Babe" , by Walt Whitman 

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"As the Time Draws Nigh"...for a friend.

As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,

A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.

I shall go forth,

I shall traverse The States awhile - but I cannot tell whither or

how long;

Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice

will suddenly cease.

O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?

Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?...And yet it

is enough, O soul !

O soul ! we have positively appear'd - that is enough.

From Walt Whitman's "Songs of Parting", Leaves of Grass, 1865.

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Like minds...on Whitman.

From Wild Blue Yonder (Jennifer's packing list) -

Books - When I travel on location I always have Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass with me. I love it; it calms me in ways I can't explain.

Go figure. You can do a search of "Walt Whitman" in the upper left corner of this blog for my Whitman smatterings.

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April 12, 1861. Fort Sumtner.

"How Solemn As One by One" (1865) by Walt Whitman

HOW solemn as one by one,

As the ranks returning worn and sweaty,

as the men file by where stand,

As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces

studying the masks, (As I glance upward out of this page studying you,

dear friend, whoever you are,)

How solemn the thought of my whispering soul

to each in the ranks, and to you,

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,

O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,

Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;

The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,

Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,

Nor the bayonet stab, O friend.

- from Walt Whitman's "Drumtaps"

Watch - and listen, lest we forget.

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"These I, Singing in Spring".

And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut, And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar: These, I, compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits, Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me, Indicating to each one what he shall have—giving something to each; But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve, I will give of it—but only to them that love, as I my- self am capable of loving.

Excerpt from "These I, Singing in Spring", by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1867)

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Happy Birthday, Brother!

My brother and I are close.

You may know that I'm a Walt Whitman fan. Whitman had six brothers and two sisters and he was closest to his brother, Thomas Jefferson Whitman (often called, "Jeff"). They exchanged many letters. Here's an excerpt from one, dated March 3, 1863:

Dear Walt:

That she bitch of Hell, the Brown, is trying her strongest to clear us out and I honestly think Walt that I shall just take and belt old Johny 3 under the eye if he attempts any of his last summers games...

To day the bitch could do nothing better than spend an hour or two in getting the lid of the cistern up and has left it in the old dangerous style half on and half of[f] the hole...

Jeff.

The "she-bitch" Jeff was referring to was the landlord. Toilet talk - in 1863, perhaps? It reminded me of my brother and I shootin' the breeze.

Happy Birthday, Jason.
Love, Jeff

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"The Voice of Rain" by Walt Whitman.

Lasting all of 15 minutes, a rainburst blew through my hometown. The sun has resumed peaking through the clouds...and now I have to write about it.

My father and I were sitting on the porch - we love rain. We heard a yelp from the garage and here this little toad fell out of a bowl my mother had picked up (it wasn't a "yelp" really - my mom's a farm girl...nothing frightens her). With a bit of assistance, we helped Mr. Toad on his merry way into the flower garden. Not sure if the toad brought the rain out or the other way around.

The Voice of the Rain

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd,
altogether changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1891-1892

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summer (it's coming).

A glimpse of the garden at Galena's Steamboat House. (Turns out the close-up shot is much better than the full flower - check a couple posts down.)

"Give me the odorous at sunrise

a garden of beautiful flowers

where I can walk undisturbed."

- Walt Whitman

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"Song at Sunset" and a cabin in the woods.

1 SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat—you, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.
2 Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

excerpt from "Song at Sunset" (1867) by Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass"

A cabin west of Madison in Wisconsin. A thousand acres. No one around. Spent this past Sunday through Monday there with my brother. It's difficult to leave...

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Happy Birthday, Brother!

My brother Jason on the Pacific shore in Monterey, Cali, 2008. I'm taking him out to dinner today.

"As I wend to the shores I know not,

As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd,

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,

I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift,

A few sands and dead leaves to gather,

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift."

- excerpt from "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life", by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860

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"The Sleepers", by Walt Whitman

"I swear they are all beautiful,
Every one that sleeps is beautiful, everything in the dim
light is beautiful,
The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace."

- excerpt from "The Sleepers", by Walt Whitman, first published version, 1855, Leaves of Grass

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The Good Gray Poet touting Levi's?

Walt Whitman endorsing Levi's? Say it ain't so, Walt? I'm sure you've seen these ads. I won't comment on them - read this article from Slate.com.

Whether it's Michael Jordan's Nike's or Elizabeth Taylor perfume, celebrities moonlighting as Madison Avenue hawkers is as common as...well, as poop. The public's affinity for coveting products touted by a favored actor or athlete says, I think, more about people's desperation to live their lives through someone else's than it does about the celebrity making a buck.

I'm a big fan of Whitman's - my favorite poet. Being a writer and having worked as an advertising agency copywriter, I understand the creative nudge for wanting to marry Whitman's poetry with a product like Lev's - a product engrained in Americana as much as Whitman is engrained in America's literary history. But I'm also leery of making Walt a spokesperson for a product without his permission. I get the public domain thing. Still...well, you be the judge. Levi's began this campaign this past summer; the commercial above contains a snippet of "Pioneers! O Pioneers!". The commercial in the Slate.com article uses portion of Whitman's, "America". It's thought that the voiceover in the "America" spot is an actual recording of Whitman's voice.

Levi's were around when Whitman was alive. It's likely he may have even worn a pair or two.

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