This evening I start teaching a poetry unit in Free Minds, and we will begin by reading aloud from Leaves of Grass. I’ve never taught Whitman before, but in the spring of 2020, all of us locked down in our individual homes, Free Minds offered a virtual reading of the poem. For the better part of an hour we read aloud—alums and faculty and friends in Austin, England, North Carolina, Boston. Different voices, accents, intonations. It was transcendent.
So we will try it again tonight. And in the box I placed these famous lines from Whitman’s Preface that might very well be titled, “Instructions on Living a Life.”
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals…
