Author Archives: Prof VZ

Book Review from Agni: Whitman, Lately: C.K. Williams’s On Whitman

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Prof VZ

As you’ve all worked so diligently on your research papers, I thought it would be fitting to post part of a piece I’ve been working on over the course of the semester–a piece I recently published in a journal called … Continue reading →

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Hope, Dread and the Powers of Ten

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Prof VZ

Olivia writes eloquently of the hope and optimism that persist against the undertow of despair and disconnection in Spahr’s This Connection.  I also try to read against the grain of that bleakness. But it is hard! (I do think I … Continue reading →

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Ginsberg’s Letter…

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Prof VZ

I just wanted to direct you all to a remarkable letter that Ginsberg wrote to fellow (and senior) poet Richard Eberhart on May 18 1956.  Eberhart was preparing to write a piece on “Howl” and other work from the SF … Continue reading →

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Neruda and Whitman and Forgetting

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Prof VZ

James’s recent and incisive post offers a brilliant reading of the many arguably un-Whitmanian energies in Neruda’s love poem #20. More generally, he voices a healthy dose of skepticism concerning the degree to which we might think of Neruda or any … Continue reading →

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Desaparecidos / The Disappeared

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Prof VZ

I rushed through Neruda’s biography yesterday–I hope you have a chance to check it out on your own before class tomorrow.  Neruda fell in and out of favor with various Chilean governments, but his most profound disappointment came with the overthrow … Continue reading →

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From the Telegraph to Twitter: Whitman at Night

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Prof VZ

The Twitterfall on the right might seem utterly random: we go from traffic news, to events at Walt Whitman schools and shopping malls, to the most butchered W quotes (the other night something came up that seemed to be Kanye … Continue reading →

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Whitman’s Words: Robert Creeley Reading “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Prof VZ

I love listening to poets read other poets. Robert Creeley was a famous Black Mountain poet who died in 2006. He is perhaps best known for short-lined, dynamic poems that chart an elusive psychic distress. Here’s one of his most … Continue reading →

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The Empire of Sadness

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Prof VZ

I received word recently that Annah Browning (CofC ’08) published her first poem in The Kenyon Review Online.  It’s a lovely, elegiac, subtly Whitmanian poem. This poem pairs perfectly with Whitman’s pre-war poems of crisis, even as it captures the … Continue reading →

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The W Blog

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Prof VZ

Welcome to The W Blog–soon to be the most dedicated Whitmanian blog in the world, with 20+ dedicated bloggers exploring Walt Whitman and his influence across the twentieth century and beyond!

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