Happy 200th Birthday to Uncle Walt Whitman!!!

WALT WHITMAN

May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892

Authentic, Glorious, Ecstatic, Spacious

A Lover of all Humanity, A True Human Being

Namaste Sweetie,

Happy Phriday!!!

And

HAPPY 200th BIRTHDAY UNCLE WALT!

Today is all about this amazing human being
I found a very good documentary on YouTube
About the Life and Work of Walt Whitman 
Here's the (LINK)
   

Everyone Everywhere 

Needs to get to know 

Walt Whitman

For he was every man, woman and child

He was you and he was me

He was not a poet sitting in his ivory tower

Dispensing pretty little rhymes and meter

He was of the mud and of the stars

Earthy Raw and Divine Ecstasy

Born two hundred years old-

He still speaks to us as one of us

A fellow pilgrim traveling through the universe

Speaking directly to you and me as Teacher and Friend

Do not miss out on one of Life's Treasures

Get to know him

He will guide you to

Enlighten your mind

Free your spirit

Open your heart

Knowing him can vastly enrich your life

One of his Friends was the painter

Thomas Eakins

Here is a portrait painted by him of WW

Walt Whitman by Thomas Eakins

~*~

Boy, did I pull a huge boner last night

And NO! Not the good kind

It took me HOURS to put today's main post together

I worked and worked so diligently 

As I clicked publish

I realized that I had posted it to The Good Stuff

And not to AOM MD

SO

I tried to import just the one post

I think you can do it but....

I wound up importing all the posts

from The Good Stuff to Here

There are only about 20 days of posts

So it just filled in the days I didn't post here

But It was a comedy of errors

Winding up with spaghetti all over my head

:  )

I guess it will be all right

I do hope you will enjoy your visit

and if you have not done so,

I hope that you will get to know Whitman

Alan Ginsberg said of Whitman:

"He was

in some respects.

 The precursor of Gay Liberation"

I would take that further

And suggest

Whitman is still today a huge influence on

The Liberation of All Humanity

I wish you a most Wonderful Walt Whitman Day!

Peace and Love,

AOM

Poems of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

36.

EARTH! my likeness!

Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric 

there,

I now suspect that is not all;

I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible 

to burst forth;

For an athlete is enamoured of me—and I of him,

But toward him there is something fierce and terrible 

in me, eligible to burst forth,

I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs.

~*~

A Glimpse

BY WALT WHITMAN

A glimpse through an interstice caught, 

Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner, 

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, 

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, 

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. 

~*~

O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

~*~

"What will your verse be?" 

Robin Williams Apple iPad Air Commercial

YouTube Direct Link: https://youtu.be/Ep2_0WHogRQ

MUSIC: "Tennessee by Hans Zimmer

Beautiful

Hans Zimmer

"Tennessee"

from the movie Pearl Harbor

YouTube Direct Link: https://youtu.be/vzvVsNIWRhM

Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric" Illustrated by AOM

Walt Whitman

To honor this Great Man on his 200th birthday

AOM pays homage by illustrating this section from:

I Sing the Body Electric

by Walt Whitman

Album: Leaves of Grass

(note: "balks account" means "cannot be fully described or defined or explained)

2.
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, 

or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and from the heave of the water,

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, 

The Rowers by Thomas Eakins

(WW's Friend who painted his portrait) 

the horse-man in his saddle,

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or cow-yard,

The young fellow hoeing corn, 

the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

Wrestlers by Thomas Eakins

(WW's Friend who painted his portrait)

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd neck and the counting;

Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.