Tag Archives: Walt Whitman

Bruce Weber and I Collaborate on a Poem (It gets wackier)

The August issue of Chronogram published a collaborative poem by Bruce Weber and myself. Lines Never Written by e.e. cummings under a gray sky epiphanies linger like frost on the tongue sparrows taste best when swallowed by the sea moose … Continue reading

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John Burroughs: The Anti-Santa Naturalist

(Originally published in the June 11, 1998 Woodstock Times.) By 1912, John Burroughs, a celebrated and opinionated author on the sublime importance of nature for one’s personal character, had noticed the birth of the automobile. And he didn’t like it. … Continue reading

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Why Poets Love Walt Whitman

(In their introduction to an anthology of 100 poems, Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life & Work of Walt Whitman, the editors, Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro, explain his enduring appeal. Here’s an excerpt.) 1865. Leaves of Grass. Has … Continue reading

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Walt Whitman, an American, One of the Roughs, a Kosmos

(In 2003 The Country and Abroad published this appreciation. Though we no have Laura Bush to kick around, we will always have Whitman.) I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? I follow you whoever you are … Continue reading

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Hart Crane Hears the River

For years, I’ve been mesmerized by Hart Crane’s poetry as dazzling verbal displays that suggest stories lurking within their densities but always favor ecstatic language over explaining what’s going on. To read his poems aloud is to hear jazz pouring … Continue reading

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Whitman Land, by John Burroughs

(Today, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson reign as the King and Queen of Nineteenth Century American poetry. It wasn’t always so. In 1896, four years after Whitman’s death, John Burroughs, one of America’s most beloved authors at the time, published … Continue reading

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Trees, by William Weaver Christman

(In 1934, on the verge of turning seventy, Christman published this essay in a local literary magazine called Trails. A lifelong farmer in Duanesburg just west of Albany County, he’d always enjoyed literature; earlier in his life, he’d corresponded with … Continue reading

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Susan Deer Cloud wins a NYFA

My friend, the big hearted Susan Deer Cloud, has just won a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grant, sending a much needed $7,000 her way. Though she lives in Binghamton, she returns often in her poetry to her … Continue reading

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