Friday, November 11, 2011

NaNoWriMo Day #11 and "Kosmos" by Walt Whitman

Bryony Prequel, First Section, Chapter 10: No check. :(

Word Count: Zero.

No, this is not lack of discipline, or I would not be writing this blog today. I did, however, have a hand injury (right hand, no less, sigh!), whose treatment is taking up some of my time, even as I struggle to meet other deadlines. No fear; I will be back at the prequel before too long.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) seems to be the buzz word lately. One friend is rehearsing a one-man play about Whitman's life; another, who just agreed to do some regular guest-blogging from Bryony, has this poem posted on his Facebook wall. Since it's also one of my favorites, I'm including it here.


Kosmos


WHO includes diversity, and is Nature,
Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also,
Who has not look’d forth from the windows, the eyes, for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing;
Who contains believers and disbelievers—Who is the most majestic lover;
Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the aesthetic, or intellectual, 5
Who, having consider’d the Body, finds all its organs and parts good;
Who, out of the theory of the earth, and of his or her body, understands by subtle analogies all other theories,
The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of These States;
Who believes not only in our globe, with its sun and moon, but in other globes, with their suns and moons;
Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day, but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, 10
The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.



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