A few words from Uncle Walt...

I have many favorites from the world of words, specifically poetry. Picking a single one as the only one, would be like picking out a single star to light the night sky; it would be a very dark night indeed. I love my favorites for various reasons. Some paint beautiful pictures. Some sound musical and magical when falling from the tongue. Some warm and comfort. Some give to words wings that are so beautiful they cannot be read without tears. And some tell the stark grey truth of this world. Their truth adds color to drab, not with flowery images or optimistic stanzas, but with the beauty found in the honesty of the human experience.

There are few poet's who do this as well as Walt Whitman. I heard once that the beauty of his poetry occured because he took us to the kitchens of America and made us want to stay when we arrived. Leaves of Grass is the most stark, and yet seemingly beautiful, presentation of the human world. If you haven't read it, you should try. It is a lot to read at once and it requires patience while acquiring the rhythms of his language, but it is worth the work. So, for Friday, a few words...

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very fleash shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face an between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."

...and in case that wasn't enough...

A Clear Midnight

This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
night, sleep, death and the stars.