Describing a high school English class that he teaches, Carl Rosin draws on the American Transcendentalists as he insists that his students live lives of integrity. His final assignment requires them to put what they have thought and read into action.
At a time when he was feeling depressed and suicidal, Michael Bourne discovered that Walt Whitman could get him to step beyond his “endless, self-constructed maze of Self.”
Today, for July 4, I offer up two ultra-American poems. Walt Whitman embraces multitudes” in “I Hear America Singing,” and Langston Hughes, in an addendum, mentions some of those Americans that, in the past, have been forgotten. May we all remember that America is astounding in its willingness to open itself to all people.
My 15 minutes of fame came when I read Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain, My Captain” to the people of Slovenia. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. As today is D-Day, it seems a good time to tell the story.
