poetry...

ok, so today there are two poets in my minds....for starts...(from mpr)today is the birthday of poet Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, New York (1819). He grew up in Brooklyn, and lived in New York City for most of his life. He began working as a printer's assistant from a very young age, and in the '40s and '50s he worked for a series of newspapers in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was in New York City, in 1855, that Whitman published the first edition of his poetry collection Leaves of Grass. He couldn't find anyone to publish it for him, so he sold a house and used the money to publish it himself. There was no publisher's name or author's name on the cover, just a picture of Whitman himself. He wrote the poems in a new style, a kind of free verse without rhyme or meter. He said in one preface to the book, "Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves."

Leaves of Grass got mostly bad reviews, but Ralph Waldo Emerson called it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed." Whitman printed Emerson's comment on the second edition of the book, and he wrote an anonymous review of it himself, hoping to spark sales. Whitman continued to add poems to Leaves of Grass and publish it in different editions throughout his life. It eventually went through nine different editions; Whitman compared the finished book to a cathedral that took years to build, or a tree with visible circles of growth. In the 1880s the Society for the Suppression of Vice called it immoral in a Boston newspaper, and that's when it finally started to sell. Whitman used the money to buy a cottage in Camden, where he spent the rest of his life.

the other poet called to mind today is theodore ohara, of danville, ky, who wrote the poem memorialized on the marker in the courthouse 'park'.....

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD"By Theodore O'Hara
The muffled drums sad roll has beat
The soldier's last Tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
But glory guards, with solumn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

this is all that is on that marker.....the rest can be read on-line.....it is much too sad to read.....but basically calls to mind all that is horrid about war......written just after the mexican/american war...and made famous during the civil war.....it means more to me having read and seen cold mountain..........and has the requisite street named after him.........just a little bit of remembrance on this memorial day........