You may have heard Walt Whitman on TV recently. A 39-second recording from 1890 is possibly an early Edison recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem America. Now, the recording is being used in a Levi's campaign [YouTube version] (the Whitman poem "Pioneers" in the second commercial is read by the blacklisted actor who once played Grandpa Walton); a campaign which some critics think is far too romantic for today's jaded youth.
posted by blahblahblah on Oct 7, 2009 - 89 comments

The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway
As the dead in their graves are underfoot hidden
And the living pass over them, recking not of them,
Laugh on laughers! Drink on drinkers!

posted by Miko on Aug 15, 2008 - 9 comments

96 Minutes... 40 years later. Texas Monthly has an article that, through eyewitness accounts, tells the tale of Charles Whitman. Forty years ago today--before 9/11, Columbine, Oklahoma City, "going postal"--Whitman perpetrated an act of public terror that impacted the national conscience. It all began when he killed his mother. Then he started typing a letter that, after he killed his wife, he finished hand-writing. Then he went to the Tower with a small arsenal and began the slaughter. Over 96 minutes he killed 13 more people and wounded 34 others until off-duty Officer Ray Martinez made it to the top of the tower and killed Whitman. (more inside)
posted by dios on Aug 1, 2006 - 71 comments

"I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.."

Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass is 150 years old today.

"Great is life . . and real and mystical . . wherever and whoever,
Great is death . . . . Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life."

posted by peacay on Jul 4, 2005 - 30 comments

The Walt Whitman Archive, and the Poet at Work.
posted by hama7 on Jun 29, 2004 - 7 comments

WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, COULD YOU REPEAL THE GENEVA CONVENTION? Bush's EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said yesterday that the Kyoto treaty on climate change was dead. She said, "No, we have no interest in implementing that treaty." Under the treaty, the U.S. would have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Earlier this month, Whitman signed a formal declaration with environmental ministers from other industrialized nations pledging to move forward on the treaty.
posted by semmi on Mar 28, 2001 - 14 comments