Are you really addicted to a specific poet? Take them to work with you.

Jonesing for a little Robert Frost or Maya Angelou during the weekdays, but find yourself going through withdrawals and the shakes while at work? Good news! You can take them to work with you.

Oh, hello, T. S. Elephant. #TakeYourPoetToWorkDay #PoetToWorkDay @tspoetry pic.twitter.com/PkZ8PmZZhG

— WC Literary House (@WCLiteraryHouse) July 20, 2016

An organization called Tweetspeak Poetry sponsors various poetry "holidays" throughout a given year, all in an effort to make poetry more approachable to today's modern sensibilities. Picture your mom gussying up cauliflower when you were a kid all in hopes you might digest more of it. Same thing.

The third Wednesday of every July is Take Your Poet to Work Day. This year that would be July 19th. As the sponsors, Tweetspeak Poetry has a downloadable coloring book of famous poets ranging from American (Dickinson, Hughes, Whitman, etc.) to international (Akhmatova, Neruda, Issa, etc.).

Happy #TakeYourPoettoWorkDay Forget yours @ home? Stop by the 2nd fl. & make a new one :) @tspoetry #poettowork pic.twitter.com/hT3xQEuqZF

— CSCC Library (@CSCC_Library) July 20, 2016

After coloring in your favorite poet, you're supposed to cut out the drawing and adhere it to a Popsicle stick and--voila!--you take them to work with you. Not only do you get to color, you have a semi-valid excuse to scarf down a half-dozen Popsicles all of a sudden.

Tweetspeak also recommends leaving coloring book sheets in the lunch room, all in hopes that lazy coworker of yours might actually show some initiative and color in their own favorite poet, too.

I snuck a #poettowork today @KCLibrary #AnnaAkhmatova pic.twitter.com/Z3fc8tj3Yz

— KaiteStover (@MarianLiberryan) July 20, 2016

Polish off another half-dozen Popsicles and tell yourself you're just doing it to be selfless and help others who need a stick.

You're so generous!!

Baseball Opening Day, Walt Whitman, and Susan Sarandon

Most of Major League Baseball officially has its Opening Day today, the sports equivalent of a town crier heralding spring in the form of bat and ball and glove.

April is also National Poetry Month, a quick 30-days where Americans casually pretend they read poetry and recount that time in second grade they were really digging Shel Silverstein.

Many poets have written about baseball, though--one of the rare times literature and sports merge, as the construction, the imagery, the metaphors inherent in baseball are hardly found in other American team sports. Be it Donald Hall, May Swenson, Marianne Moore--when writers tend to comment or craft a piece about a sport, rare as it is, usually it's about baseball.

Case in point: Walt Whitman, of all people, is quoted in the movie Bull Durham by Susan Sarandon's character as she woos her latest lover, who is a baseball player. Sarandon's character, after all, believes in "The Church of Baseball." She claims Whitman said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us."

Not quite what he said. Good try, though.

So what did Whitman actually say about baseball? The sport of bats and balls was newly created at the time Whitman was an old man. A writer named Horace L. Traubel began having conversations with Whitman late in the famed poet's life and took notes, compiling them in a book called With Walt Whitman in Camden. Being Whitman, of course, his thoughts weren't pithy.

His actual thoughts on baseball?


"I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a necessary physical stoicism. We are some ways a dyspeptic, nervous set: anything which will repair such losses may be regarded as a blessing to the race. We want to go out and howl, swear, run, jump, wrestle, even fight, if only by so doing we may improve the guts of the people: the guts, vile as guts are, divine as guts are!"

Later, in another conversation with Traubel, Whitman continued on baseball:


"Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."


If, as Sarandon's character in Bull Durham believes, that there is a Church of Baseball, then Whitman saw the divine in it a hundred years earlier in the twilight of his life, the American game, our game, a beautiful thing, with divinity found in guts.

The Friday Poem: Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love, by Walt Whitman

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love, by Walt Whitman

PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love,
O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born,
The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascend—I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

Walt Whitman wrote a letter for a dying soldier to his wife.

Walt Whitman has been labeled many things, but humble is not one of them.

The same Walt Whitman that gets guff for being cocky about his writing ability is also the same Walt Whitman modest enough to spend many days during the Civil War visiting hospitals filled with wounded and dying soldiers, writing letters for them or simply sitting down to have a chat.

Jackie Budell, a specialist with the National Archives, tells NPR that a letter discovered by researchers in February is only the third known document written by a solider to his family, but done in Whitman's hand.

"He just literally visited people. And he bought stationery and he would bring it with him and he would offer to write letters home for them," she tells NPR's Michel Martin. "Many [soldiers] were illiterate but also many were just too sickly to write so he would offer to do that."

One such sickly soldier was Robert Nelson Jabo, a French Canadian living in New York state who was a Union soldier dying in a hospital too far away to reach family. Whitman sat down with Jabo to write the following:


Washington, Jan. 21, 1865(6)

My Dear Wife,

You must excuse me for not having written to you before. I have not been very well + did not feel much like writing – but I feel considerably better now – my complaint is an affection of the lungs. I am mustered out of service, but am not at present well enough to come home. I hope you will try to write back as soon as you receive this + let me know how you all are, how things are going on – let me know how it is with mother. I write this by means of a friend who is now sitting by my side + I hope it will be God's will that we shall yet meet again. Well I send you all my love + must now close.

Your affectionate husband,
Nelson Jabo

Written by Walt Whitman
a friend.


"I think Walt's time was the most important gift that he was giving these men," Budell tells NPR. "Really they just needed someone to sit by their side."

As did Jabo. He died from tuberculosis shortly after this letter was written.

He never made it home, he never saw his wife.

The Friday Poem: To a Stranger, by Walt Whitman

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


To a Stranger, by Walt Whitman

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,         5
I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Poems on shirts. Very, very expensive shirts.

Erdem is a fashion designer who has experience with Vivienne Westwood and Diane von Furstenburg. I know this because I'm fairly literate and just read it off the Neiman Marcus website.

What does this have to do with us? Erdem has released poetry-inspired high fashion shirts, covered in verses from his two favorite poets, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Described as a "Naomi Handwritten Love Poem Script Lace Shell"--which itself sounds as delicate as Dickinson and as cryptic as Whitman--the shirt consists of portions of both poets' works on the front, while the reverse side is labeled as a "very sheer organza back with keyhole." Ooh-la-la.

Dickinson's "I hide myself within my flower" and Whitman's "Passing Stranger!" are the two poems selected. The shirt retails for a gotta-have price of $1,490.

You, too, can stand frozen with a moody face and lifeless arms in a shirt that costs 1/30th the average American's salary!






I know what you're saying: But how can I pull the look together??
Neiman Marcus would like to recommend Erdem's Bonite Boxa Organza Lace Jacket for $2,640, matched with Erdem's Zola Tailored Lace Organza Trousers for $769.

Wearing an everyday Walt Whitman outfit for under $5,000? Tres chic.

Poets Reading Poetry: Walt Whitman

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.

Today: Walt Whitman

In the early 1990s, scholars believed they discovered a wax recording of Walt Whitman reading the first four lines of his poem 'America.' The sound comes from an NBC cassette from the early 1950s where broadcaster Leon Pearson identifies it as a wax recording of Whitman reading the poem. The wax recording itself dates from either 1889 or 1890, which would coincide with Whitman's revising of the poem in 1888.

While nearly all experts believe the recording to be authentic from around 1890, some are concerned it isn't Whitman himself, but an actor. Roughly at the same time though, Thomas Edison was interested in recording Whitman. A gentleman named Sylvester Baxter recommended to Edison to record the poet. This led to Edison's secretary to write back to Baxter, "Mr. Edison has received your letter of the 8th instant in regard to obtaining a phonographic record of the poet Whitman. He is very much obliged for your suggestion, and will endeavor to carry it out." No record was made of Edison and Whitman meeting, so we're left to wonder.

By 1889 or 1890 Whitman was a 70 or 71-year old man, in failing health, who was to die in 1892. At the same time, the recording is clearly that of an elderly man with strong, resonate tones--as Whitman's associates described his voice in his later years.

Who knows? It's more fun to assume it's Whitman though.

The poem in its entirety:


America

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.




recording: BrainPickings.org

Where Dead Writers Reside: Part Three

It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.

Now through Halloween we'll post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.

Today: Katherine Mansfield, Charles Chesnutt, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen

Katherine Mansfield

Like many in her day, Mansfield was diagnosed with tuberculosis, in her case at the age of 29. She spent the final five years of her life trying a myriad of ways of battling the disease, none of which held any positive effect.

At the age of 34, Mansfield died from a pulmonary hemorrhage after running up a flight of stairs, further proving why escalators are your friend.

Mansfield is buried at Cimetière d'Avon, Avon
Département de Seine-et-Marne
Île-de-France, France, where she was last at an institute for the treatment of her tuberculosis.




Tombstone Notes:
Bonus points for the wannabe garden party at the foot of the grave. Homey, chic decor can lighten up any cemetery plot!

Charles Chesnutt

There's a great rift among the scholarly set as to Charles Chesnutt's literary merit. He wrote an array of short stories, novels, and essays regarding race in America, about self-identity and social construct and belief structures--and while his message was one that many believe was powerful, others argue it was flimsy and lacked complexity.

All of this is a diversionary tactic so as to avoid saying I don't know how Charles Chesnutt died. No amount of research tells me what the cause of death was. He's dead though--died in Cleveland, OH, in 1932, and is interred at Lake View Cemetery. Because living in Cleveland kills everyone in time.

Tombstone Notes:
In the vein of that humble, modest, "I guess someone is buried under here," subtle sort of way John Steinbeck has as well.

Walt Whitman

Whitman's final years are as familiar as any elderly person's. In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke and moved into the home of his brother in Camden, NJ. Later, when the brother and sister-in-law moved for business reasons, Whitman bought a house across town in Camden, where he would spend the rest of his days.

In 1892, in failing health, Whitman spent $4,000 on a mausoleum for his body. By March 26, Whitman was dead. A who's-who of lung ailments killed him. An autopsy (performed in his home) declared Whitman died from "pleurisy of the left side (lung), consumption of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis, and paranchymatous nephritis." His left lung had collapsed, his right lung was at 1/8th capacity, and an egg-sized abscess had eroded one of his ribs.

That trouble breathing you're feeling right now? Yeah, that's totally psychosomatic, I swear.

Whitman was buried in his $4,000 mausoleum in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, NJ. Later, the bodies of his parents, two brothers, and their families would be moved in as well.

Tombstone Notes:
Only a miniature house could do for the cocky Whitman.

Jane Austen

God only knows what killed Jane Austen.

A 1964 "retrospective diagnosis" (where doctors look at symptoms of long dead famous people and guess what killed them) says Austen died of Addison's Disease, an adrenal disease where the body doesn't produce enough steroids.

Other experts suggest Austen died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, bovine tuberculosis, or Brill-Zensser disease. Austen, during her life, described her symptoms as rheumatism.

Her main symptom? Death. She was 41.

Austen's brother, Henry, hooked her up to a plot in the floor of Winchester Cathedral of Winshester, Hampshire, England. Nothing in the epitaph--written by her brother James--describes her skill as a writer.

Sigh.

Tombstone Notes:
A little bit wordy and over the top. Clearly James wasn't the writer in the family.

You are what you eat.

The New York Times had a cute little story recently about what famous writers ate while working on their craft. What they ate conjures images awfully similar to how they wrote. But the article is best surmised in the following drawing that was part of it:

Let's analyze the food choices for what they casually say about the writer:

Lord Byron:  Vinegar.
What it says about him:  Smelly dude, silent pickle lover.

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket): Raw, unpeeled carrots.
What it says about him:  Wow, there's a party.

Marcel Proust:  Espresso.
What it says about him:  Figures.

Joyce Maynard:  Lime popsicles.
What is says about her:  Less weird than JD Salinger.

Michael Pollan:  Tea out of a glass and roasted almonds during breaks.
What it says about him:  Someone just haaaas to be a little different, huh?

Walt Whitman:  Oysters and meat for breakfast.
What it says about him:  Aphrodisiac lover.

Mary Roach:  Pretty near-raw beef pho and corn nuts.
What it says about her:  Pretty gassy.

Truman Capote:  Coffee, mint tea, sherry, martini.
What it says about him:  Pees a lot.

John Steinbeck:  Cold toast and stale coffee.
What it says about him:  Potentially wrote at a booth at Denny's.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:  Canned meat eaten from the tin and apples.
What it says about him:  Possibly Hawaiian.

Franz Kafka:  Milk.
What it says about him:  Superhuman bone strength, kidney stones.



Photo / Drawing: New York Times, Wendy MacNaughton