America’s first true poet.
In my life I was a typesetter and a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle; during the terrible war that ripped our nation asunder I was a nurse and cared for the wounded in both Blue and Gray.
I wrote about my experiences of America and her people in works such as Specimen Days, Democratic Vistas, and The Leaves of Grass.
I loved men and women alike. I sang the song of the open road. I contained multitudes.
California DoE response to today's Trump EO against trans students et al, via LinkedIn.
Original at the link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cadepted_president-trump-issued-an-executive-order-activity-7290516201145872384-LeOM
Screencap (with alt text) attached.
President Trump issued an executive order to find out what education funds he can legally rescind based on curriculum he doesn’t like. Existing law already… | 33 comments on LinkedIn
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
Preface, Leaves of Grass, 1855
#Whitman #LeavesOfGrass
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes. . . .
Preface, Leaves of Grass, 1855
#Whitman #poetry #LeavesOfGrass
To the East and to the West
To the East and to the West,
To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,
These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,
I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb friendship, exalte, previously unknown,
Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.
Leaves of Grass
#Whitman #poetry #LeavesOfGrass
O Me! O Life!
O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
The Wallabout Martyrs
Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,
Once living men — once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.
Attached: 1 image 🤔 https://www.theatlantic.com/author/walt-whitman/
Anne Applebaum
Steve Herman
Solarbird 