My 15 minutes: during Slovenia’s 1995 V-E Day celebration I read Walt Whitman to a national television audience.
In reflecting on death and dying, Roger Ebert turned to literature rather than to film.
Also posted in Behan (Brendan), Bellow (Saul), James (Henry), Remi (Georges) | Tagged Brendan Behan, death, Georges Remi, Henry James, Herzog, Kurt Vonnegut, Leaves of Grass, Roger Ebert, Saul Bellow, Slaughterhouse Five, Tintin, Walt Whitman |
Seeing “the Captain” Derek Jeter break his ankle conjures up Whitman’s “captain” poem.
Marilynne Robinson turns to Whitman to argue that American Democracy’s greatness lies in how it honors the individual soul.
Describing a high school English class that he teaches, Carl Rosin draws on the American Transcendentalists as he insists that his students live lives of integrity. His final assignment requires them to put what they have thought and read into action.
At a time when he was feeling depressed and suicidal, Michael Bourne discovered that Walt Whitman could get him to step beyond his “endless, self-constructed maze of Self.”
Today, for July 4, I offer up two ultra-American poems. Walt Whitman embraces multitudes” in “I Hear America Singing,” and Langston Hughes, in an addendum, mentions some of those Americans that, in the past, have been forgotten. May we all remember that America is astounding in its willingness to open itself to all people.
My 15 minutes of fame came when I read Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain, My Captain” to the people of Slovenia. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. As today is D-Day, it seems a good time to tell the story.
Film Friday The World Series between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants gives me an excuse for posting on what is, in my opinion, the greatest movie on baseball. Among the many virtues of Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham are its literary allusions and its literariness. Each year Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) chooses to [...]
