Filed under: Books, Poetry, Posts by John | Tags: Books, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Portland, OR :: One of the most difficult decisions I need to make in preparation for our trip is which books to take with me on the road. As I pack up my library, I have been setting some books aside; I am in essence determining now what I will read over the next twelve months. Right now I have five boxes of books I want to bring.
I initially considered bringing just four or five big books, but this terrifies me in a way I can’t quite explain. The books were “Democracy in America,” “Home Ground,” an encyclopedia of the American landscape edited by Barry Lopez, and the Library of America collected works of Flannery O’Connor, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.
I read the following poem while sitting on the beach at Cape Disappointment, Washington. It’s from the deathbed edition of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” I think it is a good first poem to post on the blog.
“On Journeys through the States”
On journeys through the States we start,
(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.
We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,
And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much?
We dwell a while in every city and town,
We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the Mississippi, and the Southern States,
We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,
We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul,
Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,
And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
And may be just as much as the seasons.
Filed under: Poetry, RFLOL | Tags: Ideas, Leaves of Grass, Poetry, RFLOL, Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
The basics: the first meeting of the RFLOL (Reading Fine Literature Out Loud) Club will be June 25 at my house. In honor of the 154th anniversary (on July 4) of the publication of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” let’s stage a marathon reading of the 1855 edition of “Song of Myself.” We will drink beer. Barbaric yawps will be sounded over the roof of the world. In that order. Get in touch if you want more details.
An aside: I am an idea machine with no off switch. Generally the ideas are pretty good as long as somebody not me is in charge of making them happen. Sometimes they are very bad, like the text message I recently sent Dave and Kate, proposing, casually but sincerely, that we start our own small town. Most of the ideas are fleeting, flowing back into the spiritus mundi like water spritzed into the wind. A few ideas, however, can’t be shaken and must be pursued or rejected outright.
The RFLOL Club is one of the latter. I talked with some of you last January about doing a table reading of a Shakespeare play. In February, in honor of his 200th birthday, and when three or four of us were reading “Team of Rivals,” I suggested we kick off the club with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches. I considered doing the same thing (Lincoln’s speeches) in April to mark the anniversary of Lincoln’s death. Dave and I were going to memorize the Gettysburg Address. Nothing happened, but the idea persisted. It was a sticker.
The RFLOL Club should be a lot of fun. Sorry it took me so long to follow through.
