It's been a great
two hundred years since you joined the race
and you're still out in front
by a length or more,
Walt Whitman,
whom I still see in the supermarket.
-- Alien Ginsberg
See the celebration of Whitman organized and edited by Brian Clements in association with North American Review. Brian calls the project "Every Atom" and every day for the next 200 days he will be posting a refelction and annotation of Whitman's lines starting with this one from Martin Espada. Brian writes, " Over the next 200 days you will see contributions from Rosanne Cash, Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, Billy Collins, Julia Alvarez, Colum McCann, Bill McKibben, Gary Schmidgall, Ed Folsom, Robert Hass, Erica Jong, and many, many other poets, writers, historians, songwriters, critics, postal workers, nurses, leaders, and neighbors. Please follow along, enjoy some excellent writing, and refresh your knowledge of the complex legacy of Walt Whitman, which is the complexity, as Whitman says, 'of these United States.'"
