By Whitman, Biweekly! April 6th

By Whitman, Biweekly!
Tuesday April 6th,  4pm SLT
Caledon Library, on the Hub in Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23

A Discussion led by Dame Kghia Gherardi of the works of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is one of the works at the foundations of American poetry. Its expansive attempt to capture the spirit and landscape of the 19th century United States has influenced an entire culture's self-concept, and its rich language continues to inspire readers today as it has for the century and a half of its existence.

"By Whitman, BI-Weekly" will provide an opportunity to look closely at this beloved work. Each time we'll spend an hour discussing its context and examining the poetry of the 1855 first edition.

The series will also give those who love Leaves of Grass, and those who would like to learn more, an opportunity to explore Whitman's vigorous and heartfelt poetry together.

Below is the text we'll discuss this week:

WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss and journeyman and apprentice? . . . . churchman and atheist?
The stupid and the wise thinker . . . . parents and offspring . . . . merchant and clerk
         and porter and customer  . . . . editor, author, artist and schoolboy?

Draw nigh and commence,
It is no lesson . . . . it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another . . . . and every one to another still.

The great laws take and effuse without argument,
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits . . . . I do not halt and make salaams.

I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things,
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

I cannot say to any person what I hear . . . . I cannot say it to myself . . . . it is
         very wonderful.

It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit
         forever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten decillions
         of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house.

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me or any one else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal,
I know it is wonderful . . . . but my eyesight is equally wonderful . . . . and how I was
         conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,
And how I was not palpable once but am now . . . . and was born on the last day of
         May 1819 . . . . and passed from a babe in the creeping trance of three summers
         and three winters to articulate and walk . . . . are all equally wonderful.

And that I grew six feet high . . . . and that I have become a man thirty-six years old
         in 1855 . . . . and that I am here anyhow—are all equally wonderful;
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever
         seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as
         wonderful:
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true is just as
         wonderful,
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth is equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.

Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as
         wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and
         Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.
        
GREAT are the myths . . . . I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve . . . . I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
         warriors and priests.

Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft . . . . where you sail I sail,
Yours is the muscle of life or death . . . . yours is the perfect science . . . . in you I
         have absolute faith.

Great is today, and beautiful,
It is good to live in this age . . . . there never was any better.

Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy,
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.

Great are yourself and myself,
We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,
What the best and worst did we could do,
What they felt . . do not we feel it in ourselves?
What they wished . . do we not wish the same?

Great is youth, and equally great is old age . . . . great are the day and night;
Great is wealth and great is poverty . . . . great is expression and great is silence.

Youth large lusty and loving . . . . youth full of grace and force and fascination,
Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace and force and
         fascination?

Day fullblown and splendid . . . . day of the immense sun, and action and ambition
         and laughter,
The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.