Archive for the ‘Walt Whitman’ Tag
“Roses” — Abstract Art by kenne
(You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless, un-
specified, readers belov’d,
We never met, and ne’er shall meet—and yet our souls embrace,
long, close and long;)
— from “Thanks In Old Age” by Walt Whitman
Mushrooms in the Fourteen year-old Mt. Lemmon Aspen Fire — Image by kenne
Air, soil, water, fire—those are words,
I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrated with
theirs—my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?
— from A Song of the Rolling Earth by Walt Whitman
Sneeze Weed Blossom — Computer Art by kenne
Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
In the superb vistas of death.
Wonderful to depart!
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak—to walk—to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh!
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!
To be this incredible God I am!
To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and
women I love.
— from “Song at Sunset” by Walt Whitman
Vancouver Skyline (Photo Image from August, 2009) — Grunge Art by kenne
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
— from “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman
Illustrious the Sky (August 15-16, 2015) — Images by kenne
Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,
Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,
Inflating my throat, you divine average,
You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,
Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,
Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber’d
spirits,
Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings,
even the tiniest insect,
Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body,
Illustrious the passing light—illustrious the pale reflection
on the new moon in the western sky,
Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.
— from Song at Sunset by Walt Whitman
Ed Folsom presenting “Counting from One to a Million, Whitman and the Civil War Dead” — Image by kenne
For the 24th year the Writers in Performance series at Lone Star College – Montgomery celebrated the birthday of Walt Whitman. For the last several years the celebrations has been in two parts, one a lecture on campus in the afternoon, the second part an evening gathering of poets at a local pub or cafe.
This year’s lecture featured Dr. Ed Folsom recognizing the sesquicentennial of the publication of Dram Taps, most of which Whitman wrote while serving as a hospital volunteer tending wounded and dying soldiers. Whitman felt that a poet’s voice was needed to document the war and help make sense of such a travesty.
This year’s Birthday Celebration for Walt Whitman took place May 7th, which I thought would be appropriate to delay posting till this Memorial Day, 2015. (Post Note) — The holiday originally was called Decoration Day and was a day of remembrance for Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War.
kenne
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The Gathering of Poets at Dosey Doe Music Cafe, Conroe Texas — Images by kenne
The following passage from Dram Taps includes the longest sentence ever written by Whitman.
The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up — The Unknown (from Memoranda During the War)
THE DEAD in this war—there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south—Virginia, the Peninsula—Malvern hill and Fair Oaks—the banks of the Chickahominy—the terraces of Fredericksburgh—Antietam bridge—the grisly ravines of Manassas—the bloody promenade of the Wilderness—the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill’d in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown’d—15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities—2,000 graves cover’d by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)—Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest—Vicksburgh—Chattanooga—the trenches of Petersburgh—the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere—the crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those prisons)—the dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills—(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach’d bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet)—our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend—the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee—the single graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)—the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)—some lie at the bottom of the sea—the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States—the infinite dead—(the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word
UNKNOWN.
(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A national monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the spot—but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate that spot?)
Southern Magnolia Blossom, Kingwood, Texas — Image by kenne
The hot hazy sun
A southern magnolia
And bourbon whisky
I surrender now
As luring blossoms open
Breast cleavage softness
Afternoon delight
Gives rise to my Whitman muse
Literary trysts
— kenne
Invoking the Mystery By Giving Of One’s Time — Computer Painting by kenne
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
— kenne
Panorama View of Meydenbauer Bay, Bellevue, WA
(CLICK ON ANY OF THE FOLLOWING IMAGES TO VIEW SLIDESHOW FORMAT.)
This past Sunday, in a drizzling chilly rain, I was with my nieces Vanessa and Lisa scattering their dad’s ashes at Meydenbauer Beach Park where they often spent time with their dad. Joy and I first visited the park in the mid-eighties and with the passing of time the park has changed — then a more rustic park with a lot more trees and shrubs. Either way, it’s still a beautiful park on Meydenbauer Bay on Lake Washington. Among the stories the girls shared as we walked together in the park was of their dad running from their home in Bellevue to the park — running directly into the water, which sounds a lot like Tom.
Knowing that we would be with Vanessa and Lisa as they scattered their dad’s ashes, Joy and I traveled to Seattle with some of Grandma Agnes’s aches so they would be scattered together. Since we had an “In Loving Celebration of Thomas R. Turner” ceremony Saturday in the Main Hall at Camp Long in West Seattle, there was no formal scattering of ashes ceremony — just Vanessa and daughter Violet, Lisa, Joy and me. Vanessa’s husband Jon was home with son Henry, and Lisa’s husband Mike home with son Austin. The scattering of ashes at Meydenbauer Beach Park was the way Tom would have wanted it, intimate and personal.
This coming May 23 we will be remembering Tom’s birthday with the Dylan Thomas line he always sent to me on my birthday:
“…High Among Beaks and Palavers of Vultures
He Celebrates and Spurns His Driftwood
SEVENTY-THIRD Wind Turned Age…”
In your honor, Tom, we will keep searching for clarity . . . lucidity.
kenne
Walking down to the beach
View from beach
Joy and Vanessa
Vanessa, Kenne and Lisa
Vanessa, Kenne and Lisa
Violet, Vanessa, Kenne and Lisa
Vanessa, Lisa and Kenne
Lisa with her dad’s ashes
Kenne with Tom’s ashes
Violet and Vanessa
Vanessa, Kenne and Lisa
Leaving Meydenbauer Beach Park
The following poem ended Saturday’s “In Loving Celebration of Thomas R. Turner” ceremony.
A Clear Midnight
by Walt Whitman
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
(Go To kenneturner.com to see all the “Becoming is Superior to Being” Postings.)
“Free Flight into the Wordless” — Image by kenne
Poetry is a deep inner calling in man: from it came liturgy, the
psalms, and also the content of religions. The poet confronted
nature’s phenomena and in the early ages called himself a priest,
to safeguard his vocation. . . . Today’s social poet is still a member
of the earliest order of priests. In the old days he made his
pact with the darkness, and now he must interpret the light.
— Pablo Neruda
Sabino Canyon with Fog in the Valley and Snow on Mt. Lemmon (12/12/07) —
This image by naturalist Phil Bentley captures the essence of Walt Whitman’s poem,”Kosmos”.
Kosmos
BY WALT WHITMAN
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 æsthetic or intellectual,
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,
The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.
Thanksgiving Still Life — Photo-Artistry by kenne
2.
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.
Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another–not one,
Not one can grow for another–not one.
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him–it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
the indication of his own.
— from “A Song of the Rolling Earth” by Walt Whitman
Tom Turner (Seattle, June 12, 2000) — Image by kenne
Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man’s life but a conflict with foes,
the old, the incessant war?)
You degredations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the
sharpest of all!)
You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of
any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d
ennuis!
Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come
forth,
It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.
— Walt Whitman
Tom sent this Whitman poem to me the day before my 65th birthday — “I knew you would like it.”
He was correct!
All Souls Procession — Computer Painting by kenne
At dark yesterday, Tucson celebrated its 25th All Souls Procession, with over 100,000 people participating or watching along the procession route. Dressed in customs, painted faces, and carrying pictures, it’s a night to mourn, remember and celebrate lost loved ones walking the miles-long procession. This annual event has become one of the most important, inclusive, and authentic public ceremonies in North America.
All Souls Procession
Thousands merge in the Old Pueblo
Some to stand on the curb,
Others to walk in the procession.
They gathered at Toole and Congress –
Painted faces, masks, costumes, floats
And banners honoring the dead.
Positioning near the start,
Street and flashing lights
Replacing the daylight.
Darkness setting the stage
For the night walkers to rise
Moving to a steady drum beat.
Whimsical maidens carry urns of the dead
Collecting names of loved ones to be
Ceremonially burned at procession’s end.
A Whitman sound in the dark,
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Mind, not the walkers.
They move slowly in the procession,
Holding old stained photographs,
Beat! Beat! Drums!
. . . And play the fife lowly.
kenne
(Click here for All Souls Procession images.)
“Somewhere In The West” (Joy & Kenne) — Image by kenne
Somewhere in the west
Living life to it’s fullest
Always bearing down
— kenne
*******
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
— from “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman
“Roses” — Abstract Art by kenne
Mushrooms in the Fourteen year-old Mt. Lemmon Aspen Fire — Image by kenne
Sneeze Weed Blossom — Computer Art by kenne
Vancouver Skyline (Photo Image from August, 2009) — Grunge Art by kenne
Illustrious the Sky (August 15-16, 2015) — Images by kenne
Ed Folsom presenting “Counting from One to a Million, Whitman and the Civil War Dead” — Image by kenne
Southern Magnolia Blossom, Kingwood, Texas — Image by kenne
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
— kenne
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