Weekly Whitman
John Hawley
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is unquestionably a poetic masterpiece and a cornerstone of American literature. Yet how many times has the work been heard in the full spirit of the voice that Whitman intended? The United States confronts the same divisions and idealistic tensions today as when Whitman first began publishing in 1855. To show that this text does not sound dated in the least, I intend to sing the book for a new generation of Americans, for myself, and because Walt told me to. I will explore with my audience the answers Whitman came to in versifying the contradictions of the American soul, and the hope of the American experiment.