August 10: Poetry Reading, Walt Whitman, "Long, too long America"

Tonight, I'm giving a poetry reading at Peter White Public Library, in Marquette, Michigan.  My musician friend, Linda, is going to be performing with me.  It's going to be a great event.  Not sure how many people are going to show up.  It's billed as a "Meet the U. P.'s New Poet Laureate."  I'm not sure if that's really going to draw a huge crowd.  If I get five people, I'll be happy.  If I get ten people, I'll feel like a rock star.

And really, now is the time for poetry.  I keep turning to poets as a remedy for all of the Donald Trump news.  Right now, he's having a pissing contest with North Korea, threatening "fire and fury."  The sad thing is that there are people in the United States who think a nuclear war would be a good thing.  That concerns me.  A LOT.

So, tonight, I am going to provide the remedy for anybody who shows up to listen.  I am not going to stop a nuclear war with anything I say or read tonight.  But maybe I'll calm a few troubled minds and hearts.

That's the best Saint Marty can do.

Long, too long America

by:  Walt Whitman

Long, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)