I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips
There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.
Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
So who's perfect?. . . Washington had false teeth. Franklin was nearsighted. Mussolini had syphilis. Unpleasant things have been said about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Tchaikovsky had his problems, too. And Lincoln was constipated.
American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.
Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem.
One Whitman is miracle enough, and when he comes again it will be the end of the world.
I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.
The real America that Whitman proclaimed and Thoreau decoded.
Blanche: No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!
If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.
The difference between Pound and Whitman is not between the democrat who in deep distress could look hopefully toward the future and the fascist madly in love with the past. It is that between the woodsman and the woodcarver. It is that between the mystic harking back to his vision and the artist whose first allegiance is to his craft, and so to the reality it presents.
I went through a very hairy period. I had a movie where I was going to play Walt Whitman that fell through. At the time, I had grown this huge beard and very long hair. But then, the movie got canceled, I had some other parts, and I currently have very short hair. So, when I look in the mirror, I don't know who I am exactly. It's interesting.
This is why it is good to remember: if you want to get high, don’t drink whiskey; read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, Neruda, Hopkins, Millay, Whitman, aloud and let your body sing.
You know what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman have in common? They both got in trouble for stiffing the maid.
Ric Flair, the Slim Whitman of Pro-Wrestling.
Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.
I think Whitman more than any other poet possessed the gift of revealing to others the beauty of everything around us, the beauty of nature, the beauty of human beings.
Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.
I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.
