Celebrate and Sing Walt Whitman
It's the bard's birthday. Sound your barbaric yawp!
Today is Walt Whitman’s 205th birthday. In recognition of the great wild and white-haired grandfather of American poetry entering our cosmos, we should all take a moment to “sound [our] barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.”
In that spirit, here is one of my favorite scenes in all of film, with the wonderful Robin Williams teaching a young Ethan Hawke to sound his barbaric yawp in “Dead Poets Society.” The movie also has a moving tie-in to the poem “O Captain! My Captain!” written by a heartbroken Whitman shortly after President Lincoln’s assassination and brought to life here in a beautiful rendition by a young woman with a guitar on YouTube.
It’s true what Whitman said of his poetry and himself:
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
So, for a few moments today, stop and listen for Whitman’s barbaric yawp, and let loose your own. Below…
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