Born May 31, 1819 . . .

The Bard of Democracy
Engraved portrait of Whitman from the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855) from Wikipedia Public Domain)


Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.

Notice to objectivists, teabaggers, Republicans and other corporate fascists or Koch suckers:

You may say that the American Republic is not a democracy, and you may even be right about that.

But that is a deficiency that we shall soon remedy.

Kaplan also edited a recent edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.


Whitman was a cool guy.

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

I refuse to let the right wing make me ashamed of my country - when I'm starting to feel that way, I go read some Whitman.