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

By Whitman, Biweekly!
Tuesday May 19th at 4pm SLT
Caledon Library, on the Hub in Victoria City

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23


Discussion led by Kghia Gherardi

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.

This week, we will continue our discussion of "Song of Myself," the first poem to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." We'll begin with the stanza

"The smoke of my own breath,
Echos, ripples, and buzzed whispers . . . . loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration . . . . the beating of my heart . . . . the passing of blood
         and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolored sea-
         rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice . . . . words loosed to the eddies of
         the wind,
A few light kisses . . . . a few embraces . . . . a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides,
The feeling of health . . . . the full-noon trill . . . . the song of me rising from bed
         and meeting the sun. "


Schedule:
May 5 & 19
June 2 , 16, & 30
July 14 & 28
August 11 & 25
September 8 & 22
Oct 6 & 20
Nov 3 & 17
Dec 1, 15, & 29

Introducing Whitman Weekly

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Whitman Weekly - a discussion series led by Kghia Gherardi

Tuesdays at 4pm SLT
Caledon Library, on the Hub in Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23

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 had great cultural influence, and its rich language continues to inspire readers today just as it has for the century and a half of its existence.

Whitman Weekly will provide an opportunity to look closely at this beloved work. Each week we'll spend an hour discussing its context and examining the poetry of the 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.

Schedule for April
April 7 - Overview of Whitman & Leaves of Grass
April 14 - Preface (http://tinyurl.com/log-preface)
April 21 - no discussion
April 28 - Song of Myself (http://tinyurl.com/songofmyself)

Mr Toad meets Edna St Vincent MIllay

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Such things happen in libraries.


Wind in the Willows Listening Parties
Inaugural party and broadcast!
Chapter 1: The River Bank
Saturday, Jan 10th
10am-11am SLT
Tinyville Library, Caledon Tanglewood
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Tanglewood/23/214/23/

Come as a character from Kenneth Grahame's novel,  The Wind in the Willows, and join us as we listen to,  and discuss,  a new chapter each month of the adventures of the shy but loyal Mole, the poetical Water Rat, the brave Otter, the gruff but kindly Mr. Badger, the vainglorious Toad, and all the other creatures of wood, stream, and field who populate this much-loved story.
This week, the story begins as Mole, tired of his Spring Cleaning, makes a break for it and meets the Water Rat...and The River...and finds that there's nothing so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.


Big People may join us in Tinyville, or repose in comfort at the Oxbridge Library in Caledon Oxbridge
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/196/96/24

Those who can't be with us in-world are invited to tune in at http://music.radioriel.org

This is a year-long series, the second Saturday of each month, 2009. Sponsored by the Caledon Library and Rachelville, and produced by Radio Riel


Schedule



And, on the very next day.....
(so you see, they do not actually meet after all. This time)

Caledon Library Book Discussion and Listening Party
Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sunday, Jan 11th, 2009
1-3pm SLT
HG Wells Memorial Library, Caledon Wellsian
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Wellsian/235/239/31

Or tune in at http://music.radioriel.org

This month we peer into the future to consider the poetry of Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay's passionate outpourings are rather heightened than constrained by her precise poetic diction. Add to this a strikingly natural and unabashedly frank poetical voice (her works reflect the spirit of nonconformity that pervaded her Greenwich Village milieu) and you have poetry that has been both inspiration and solace for four generations of enthusiastic readers.

Millay is justly celebrated for her ability to combine modernist attitudes with traditional forms,  creating a unique American poetry. From a biographical sketch on the Poetry Foundations site:
A reviewer for the London  Morning Post wrote, "Without discarding the forms of an older convention, she speaks the thoughts of a new age." American poet and critic Allen Tate also pointed out in the New Republic that Millay used a nineteenth-century vocabulary to convey twentieth-century emotion: "She has been from the beginning the one poet of our time who has successfully stood athwart two ages." And Patricia A. Klemans commented in the Colby Library Quarterly that Millay achieved universality "by interweaving the woman's experience with classical myth, traditional love literature, and nature."

This event will be the second of our "interactively DJ'd"  Poetry Discussions. With the kind cooperation of Radio Riel DJ (and Millay enthusiast) Gabrielle Riel, we will listen to recordings of the poems, discuss them, and then listen to them a second (or, who knows, even a third time.)
"I contradict myself?
Very well then....I contradict myself;
I am large....I contain multitudes.
"


Book Discussion
Leaves of Grass (1855) - Walt Whitman
December the Second, 6pm slt


Caledon Library & Welcome Centre, Caledon Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23



The Sense of Self in 19th century literature - a discussion series led by Kghia Gherardi
Tuesdays, once a month, 6-7pm

As exploration, industrialization and colonization expanded during the nineteenth century, the way the individual viewed his and her role within this world also altered. This literature series will look at how the individual defines himself or herself, how societies react to these changes, and how the evolving sense of self succeeds and fails.


This month we discuss Walt Whitman's engimatic and beautiful  work, in the original edition just as it burst upon an astonished world. The edition may be read online at 
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Whi1855.html  
or  
http://tinyurl.com/WhitmanLeaves55

Or listen to it here:


"I want a hero - an uncommon want"

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Caledon Library Book of the Month
Lord Byron's Don Juan

Listening Party
Sun, September 14, 12pm - 3pm
The Great Lawn of the Whitehorn Library, Caledon Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/30/180/23

Intelligent, witty, charming, outrageous, scandalous....all these are equally true of George Noel Gordon, 6th Baron Byron, and his poem "Don Juan."  Lord Byron began the poem in 1818 in Italy,  during a wild, self-indulgent and profligate period of his life, and continued to add to it until his death. The first cantos, published anonymously in 1819,  caused no little uproar for their tone and content. When the authorship was revealed, the poem confirmed Byron's reputation as a flouter of morality (in the eyes of the Mrs. Grundys of the day) and as a poet of rare genius (in the eyes of such contemporaries as Scott, Shelly, & Goethe.) Byron makes the adventures of the fictional character, Don Juan (a name then as now a byword for ignoble seduction) into an excuse to skewer the hypocrisies of his age. 

Our discussion and listening party will center on the first Canto, a recording of which will be streamed as part pf a programme produced by Radio Riel. The station's weekday programmes will also feature music from Byron's lifetime and music associated with the themes and characters of the work. See their blog at http://radioriel.blogspot.com the week of the event for details. If you can't join us in-world for the discussion, tune in on their main stream at http://music.radioriel.org

Copies of the work may be had at the library, or read in the Aether in an excellent Hyperlinked edition at
http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/donjuan.htm

NOTE: The teleport takes you to a hub in Caledon VictoriaCity... Just follow the red arrow/beacon north through the Reading Room to the Great Lawn, or use the red and gold Library Transport Device located at the telehub.





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