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a Tribute to Walt Whitman an Anthology of Poems and Essays
edited by Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) and George Wallace
ISBN: 978-0-9743603-6-2
Website: ©2010 Walter E. Harris III.
© 2007-2010 for poems and essays, individual authors.
give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
~ Walt Whitman
from “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”
THIS BOOK ON SALE THROUGH WHITMAN’S BIRTH-DATE, MAY 31
Cover Photo: 427882: Anonymous. Daguerreotype portrait of
Walt Whitman. circa, 1853. Daguerreotype. Rare Books Division,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations..
O take my hand Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next,
Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
~ Walt Whitman
from “Salut au Monde!“
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Dr. David B. Axelrod, Edgar Carlson,
Vince Clemente, Jonathan Cohen, Gary Corseri, Mark Donnelly,
Sasha Ettinger, Darrel Blaine Ford, Jean Franco, Ray Freed, Geraldine Green,
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III), Gladys Henderson, Evelyn Kandel, Rita Katz,
Ann Kenna, Jeanette Klimszewski, Charlene Babb Knadle, Norbert Krapf,
Mindy Kronenberg, Ali Lebow, D. H. Melhem, Pedro Mir (1913-2000),
Annabelle Moseley, Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, Anthony Policano,
Christina M. Rau, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, Andrea Rowen, Richard Savadsky,
Robert Savino, Alan Semerdjian, Genevieve Shore, Barbara Southard,
Douglas G. Swezey, J R (Judy) Turek, Pramila Venkateswaran, George Wallace,
Muriel Harris Weinstein, Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr., Martin Willitts, Jr.,
Ernie Wormwood, Bill Zavatsky.
* * * * *
from the "foreword"
by Mankh
I was at a party talking with a few other poets and I happened to say: “So many Long Island poets write poems
about Whitman, there’s probably enough for a book”... and the little clock on the table chimed three!
Being a noticer of signs, I thought: ‘that’s interesting'...
What you are holding now is actually a bunch of “letters,” love letters, disguised as poems and essays for, to,
about, referencing, riffing off of, contemplating, mimicking, attempting to define, embrace, even call to task,
and otherwise sit down and have a meal
and a drink with... Walt Whitman.
...give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Well, you got ‘em, Walt, though whether in the form you really wanted I could not be sure.
In any case, the poems and essays herein aim to give the individual, as well as the world-at-large, a taste of
what Whitman called for with an exclamation point: primal sanities!
* * * * *
In All Things
All truths wait in all things.
~ Walt Whitman
Holding your weathered covers in my hand
I await the greatness that arises from words,
a handful of beads broken from their leash
sprawled on the page to glitter in my sight.
How you unraveled the benediction
of The damp in the night, what surges and seethes
beneath conventional speech; I collect your words
like shells sprawled on a deserted beach,
coins fallen from pockets to clatter on stone.
I follow their pattern like leaves strewn
on a furry lawn, the small pointed palms
and stems caught mid-dance on the blades.
I followed the footprints in sand and grass,
witnessed the beautiful, bathing young men,
the curious spinster, the pensive old soldier,
the Black horseman resting his reins in the shade.
I feel the swell and sway of your voice
in the raucous chatter of birds, the wood-drake
and the mockingbird, the goose and the
wood-duck, rousing the winged spirit
from within. Even in those moments
when the world’s pockets seemed empty
and bereft of gifts, I held your tattered text
in my hands, opened the split binding
to wherever the heft of pages found me,
and knew, in the alchemy of your poems
I would find all things, my private treasure,
and I would never feel alone.
~ Mindy Kronenberg
* * * * *
The Walt Whitman Birthplace
~ Alan Semerdjian
In the off hours,
the local cats
would scourge
the terrain,
flip over
themselves for
fireflies in twilight.
The nights
rang twice:
once for us,
caretakers and
caregivers,
and once for
him, a boy
in cloth diapers first
and later
inquisitive
and bold,
full of long
lines and
dirty beards.
And when
the doorbell rang,
we knew
the possibility
of it was low,
but we were
high, high, high
for what might be
on the other side.
poet’s note:
Alan spent some time as caretaker of The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site
and Interpretive Center - three years worth of taking out the garbage in the evenings,
curating experimental art shows, and chasing ghosts.
* * * * *
Walt and the Quaker Woman
~ Vince Clemente
Walt, I feel thee is right,
he whispered to Horace, recalling
the Quaker woman who blessed him,
anointed him along his forehead
with her thumb.
And again, I could not tell thee,
but I think thee is right,
the end-of-day light
skittering cloud-cover
along the fissures
of his face.
But why now, this voice
out of shore reeds, older
than a cicada’s song?
Yet Horace understood
said nothing, read
the shine in the old man’s face.
And that evening, before leaving,
he kissed him on the forehead
the way a son honors a father,
the way....
But we know, how for Walt
memory is a fishhook
trapped in a kelp-bed,
blunted yet fierce enough
to haul in a blue
fighting for its life,
still dreaming the Sound’s deep waters, there,
far beyond the mudflats.
poet’s note:
Before Whitman’s passing he told Horace Traubel - writer, editor, and friend - of his memory of being anointed
when he was three-and-a-half years old. Another powerful memory for Whitman was of apple orchards.
* * * * *
from: Holding Each Other’s Hands
~ Geraldine Green - Cumbria, England
He was born on Long Island in 1819, but this isn’t going to be a history lesson, you can get
that from websearching or books, this is my friendship with the man, what I know of his
poems and what he’s given to me, stretching from America in the 19th century to Cumbria,
England right here and now in the 21st. Because the man was about what it is to be alive,
to wake each morning and sniff each new dawn, to lay awake as we might do, wherever we
are, at night and listen to owls calling, sheep bleating, the Long Island Railroad train’s mournful
hooting or trucks, traffic, cows, people, birds, motorbikes, sirens and children. It’s about the
rain here and now on my windows, the taste of grilled sausages in my mouth, my fingers on
these keys and my feet feeling the first slight cool breeze of autumn, coming from the open
bathroom window.
* * * * *
fr. Walt Whitman’s Natural Resources - by Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr.
Whitman “had studied the mocking-bird’s tones.”
I was suddenly and excitedly aware of this at about one o’clock on a spring morning when a couple
of Mockingbirds were singing across some backyards in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland where I
was visiting relatives. Between the sounds of cardinals, caged canaries and spring peepers, plus a
variety of generous chirps and workman-like calls, it occurred to me that these birds seemed to be
answering each other across the space of these few backyards. Although there was some overlapping,
one would usually hold forth alone — with the other, when it commenced, picking up some of the final
notes of its colleague. Then spontaneously there occurred to me a line from “Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking” that I had wondered about but never could adequately explain — “musical shuttle.”
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle...
It was an uncanny feeling to believe that I was hearing essentially the same kind of performance
that Whitman might once have listened to very closely.
I would suggest that today’s artist looking ahead in the 21st century ponder Whitman and what
he means about a “New World.”
* * * * *
fr. Joint Tenants In Reality - by Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan
The poetry of the good, gray bearded poet is so well-known worldwide that Long Islanders aren’t the only
ones to claim a piece of him as their own, yet people around the globe become Long Islanders by sharing
Whitman’s love of the “fish-shape Paumanok.”
What follows are details that glimpse the “day to day” world of Whitman. Telling about these facts reveals
how he was like us, and how we are indeed the sons and daughters of Whitman, though he (in the preface
of his 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass) defined poets and readers as peers, joint tenants in reality.
Walter Whitman Sr. was of English heritage. He married Louisa Van Velsor in 1816. She was of Dutch
and Welsh heritage.
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