Happy birthday to Walt Whitman!!! I had the pleasure of teaching him for the first time this year, and it was really great to see how much the students appreciated his idiosyncratic writing. I think it helped to show what a lunatic he was! Here’s a good one (remember Dead Poets’ Society?):
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Song of Myself 52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complainsof my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
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Also, happy Pentecost to all!! An auspicious day for talking with strangers : )
5 comments:
Dude. You are large. You contain multitudes. Yawp.
Isn't 'yawp' what the kid says in Horton Hears a Who that finally puts them over the top? Apparently yawps are powerful things.
Em
Walt knew that sometimes only a barbaric yawp will save you from boiling in beezle-nut oil.
I heard that he also knew some interesting things about Sneetches, but this is a family blog.
O Yertle! My Yertle!
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