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I Do Not Doubt I Am Limitless: Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn

By on June 22, 2010 5:27 pm in Arts and Entertainment, brooklyn bridge park, Events, Fun, Poetry

waltsmallborder The BHA is getting psychedelic with its July 1st Walt Whitman event.

The BHA is collaborating with ISSUE Project Room for a special outdoor performance, “I Do Not Doubt I Am Limitless: Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn.” This free event will channel the psychedelic spirit of poet, journalist, humanist and Brooklynite Walt Whitman, set against the stunning waterfront backdrop on the Pier 1 Harbor View Lawn of the new Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Musicians and bands — including the Wingdale Community Singers, Christy and Emily, Prince Rama, and others — will perform original work along with new pieces set to a marathon reading of “Leaves of Grass,” recited by some of the nation’s most interesting poets.

For more information, check out the BHA site here.

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Heights Couple Host Whitman Birthday Celebration Wednesday Evening

By on May 24, 2010 11:18 pm in Arts and Entertainment, Events, Food, Fun, Poetry

jsw_485px-walt_whitman_edit_22David Fuller and Judith Jarosz, Montague Street residents and Executive Director and Producing Artistic Director, respectively, of Theater Ten Ten, are curating hosting The Walt Whitman Project, their seventh annual celebration of the anniversary of the publication of the third edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, this Wednesday evening at 7:00 (doors open at 6:30), at the Theater’s space in the undercroft of the First Christian Church, entrance at 1010 Park Avenue, between 84th and 85th Streets (yes, to celebrate this great Brooklyn poet, you must schlep to the Upper East Side). According to Fuller and Jarosz, “It will be a joyous evening of poetry, prose, and music. Birthday cake and refreshments return to this year’s event.” Participants include actors, musicians, poets, a Whitman historian, Greg Trupiano and Lon Black of The Whitman Project, and film producer and BHB contributor Heather Quinlan.

Admission is by donation, and no one will be turned away. For reservations and information, call 212-288-3246 ext. 300 (24 hrs).

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Walt Whitman: the First Beatnik?

By on March 26, 2010 12:37 pm in Arts and Entertainment, Events, History, Poetry

jsw_485px-walt_whitman_edit_21jsw_allen-ginsberg12It’s not a great stretch to see stylistic, and perhaps even thematic, similarities between, say, Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. The relationship between the poetry of the nineteenth century Bard of Brooklyn (see some local folks reciting Whitman’s verse here) and that of the Beats a century later is the topic of an all-day conference tomorrow (Saturday, March 27) at St. Francis College, Remsen Street between Court and Clinton. Continue Reading →

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Solstice

By on June 20, 2009 11:23 pm in Poetry

A breeze batters branches;
the honey locust whispers,
¡Esperanza, esperanza!
On the harbor, tugs flit
on fathomless errands,
and beyond, the dentate skyline
no longer bears the memory
of Yamasaki’s towers, their image now
recumbent in brass at my feet.
A squirrel, brazen, fixes me
with blank eyes while lithe young women,
buttocks bobbing in tandem,
do pushups against a park bench.
Toddlers screech and stumble,
as nannies share news in lilting
island accents. The sun arches
on its marathon course as I turn
toward home. A gust rattles
the gingko: “It’s all downhill from here.”

Claude Scales
First published in Self-Absorbed Boomer, June 21, 2007.

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Days of Awe

By on September 29, 2008 6:10 pm in Poetry

Hm . . . Memorable . . . what? (He peers closer.) Equinox, memorable equinox. (He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled.) Memorable equinox? . . . (Pause. He shrugs his head shoulders, peers again at ledger, reads.) Farewell to–(he turns the page)–love.
– Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape

In Florida, autumn came
as a change in the light
in late afternoon,
around mid-October.
I hardly noticed it
until I was twenty.
A girlfriend left me.
I wrote a poem, ephemeral
as the love it mourned.

At sixty, autumn seems
like that last song
sung by Dave Guard’s Trio
(later covered by Sinatra):
vintage wine, days decreasing.

And now, in Brooklyn
(I’ve lived life backwards:
Florida, Manhattan, Brooklyn),
an older voice whispers
gently, to my gentile ears,
L’shanah tovah.

Claude Scales
(First published in Self-Absorbed Boomer, September 26. 2006.)

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