For anyone (else) who can’t get enough Whitman on Walls!, the amazing event the SJU English department hosted last Saturday, I have a few things to say about its printed afterlife.
The Compagnia de’ Colombari, whose amazing films about “Song of Myself” formed the backbone of this event, will publish all the poems written for all the WoW! events in book form in early 2025. They’ve done this once before, back in 2022, with the first eight versions of this event, which were held from England – in Bolton and London – to the northeastern USA, Portland to Philly to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Our event in Queens will join the second wave in print, due out sometime early next year.
I’ve got a copy of the 2022 book in my office – stop by to check it out!
There will also be a book party celebrating this publication, at City College of New York, sometime around early March. All contributing poets will be invited!
I’ll also post here, as for anyone who couldn’t make the event, my own poem, which I read toward the end of the afternoon. I was especially excited about this reading because I got to perform the poem with a chorus of students. The short bold-faced lines were voiced by four SJU student-poets, all of whom had already read their own works – Dana Livingston, Michelle Cicillini, Sean Griffin, and Peter Vanderberg – while I counterpoised the verses in between. We all came together for the final line, “feelingly.”
I don’t have a recording, but I hope you get the idea, and I hope you enjoy the poem!
The Sea sees me, feelingly
I see it feelingly…
King Lear (4.6.145)
The Sea
Wraps its wet envelope around the earth marble,
Not to squeeze, or to smother,
But as liquid flowing skin,
One thing covering another.
The Sea sees
What if it’s the biggest bluest eye?
Name it for me, Walt Whitman, if you can see
What the sea sees –
Name it for me
me
As the waters wet my skin I am seen –
Touched
Contained but not imprisoned –
me,
Like a remembered promise around my flesh
A slight pressure, weight, a slowness
That defies gravity, for a time. Salt
Water holds
me, feelingly
Because feeling tells two different stories –
Sensations that prickle the small hairs on my forearms,
And the gathering surge of emotion, building –
These things see themselves in the sea and in me,
Feelingly.
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