April 10, 2010
Rutgers University – Camden
Armitage Hall Room 121 – 11am – 5pm

MLA Presentation

Here is my long-undelivered final project, a hybrid of Walt Whitman and Elvis Presley. Please watch–it finally exists!

Courtney Irvine’sproject examines the relationship between Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech alongside Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” using an audio mashup/juxtaposition of the two men’s words. A Conversation between Martin Luther King and Walt Whitman

Ben Brischcar’s final project interprets the various voices in Whitman’s poetry through an audio experiment of readings. Give it a listen:

Walt Whitman Jr. is inarguably the most famous member of his family. However, certain primary source documents show that the rest of the Whitman clan was as colorful and intriguing as America’s most celebrated poet. Walt Whitman’s immediate family consisted of parents Walter Sr. and Louisa (nee Van Velsor); younger sisters Mary and Hannah, elder […]

I found Whitman in front of the Paul Robeson library because he’s a master of American letters who broke the literary/poetic mold.
Video will be posted very shortly. In the meantime:
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
by Walt Whitman
Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless,
I give you fair […]

A VOICE FROM DEATH.
(The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.)

A VOICE from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and
power,

With sudden, indescribable blow—towns drown’d—humanity by
thousands slain,

The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron
bridge,

Dash’d pell-mell by the blow—yet usher’d […]