This week imagine your favorite poet takes you by the hand and…
Saturday my fellow Living Poetry organizer Chris Abbate and I lead a poetry workshop at the Holly Springs Book Festival. One of the prompts I shared was more a procedure so anyone can get a fairly random poetry prompt. Take a book, close your eyes, open to a random page then plop your finger down on the page and use that as your prompt. As a live demonstration, I took the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, randomly opened it to page 636 and my finger ended up on the end of Hart Crane’s The Bridge IV. Cape Hatteras which reads “My hand in yours, Walt Whitman— so—”
So, post what happens next in the comments below.
Living Poetry 
My hand in yours, Walt
I would lead you to the barbershop.
Get you a shave and a haircut,
a shine on your shoes
Tonight at the Oasis Café
the original hipster will be reading
Leaves of Grass.
And we’ll all be getting high in the store room.
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Posted by JeanMarie | November 18, 2019, 8:44 PMHa! Excellent!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 18, 2019, 9:01 PMLove it!!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | November 19, 2019, 7:12 AMOf persons clean-shaven and kempt as likely
Are sad and hasty as souls without happiness,
Like ones in shame who pluck the hairs absently
And with sharp grief, yet I, untamed, fully bearded,
Will bring the gifts of delight and open hands to the Café Oasis.
Uncut of hair yet finely groomed, unshod like a wild horse
On the endless grass of the plain, yet with feet finely smelling,
Tenderly will I greet JeanMarie, beard poised long and happy,
Full and without haste, feet bootless and dancing with fine limbs
Unabiding moral tradition yet calm and without madness,
Hand in hand with JeanMarie and all her broad company
At the Café Oasis.
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Posted by Steve Croft | November 20, 2019, 4:23 PMHmmmm….. I see I have to keep an eye on you! 🙂
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Posted by JeanMarie | November 20, 2019, 8:33 PMI move with the gravity of mountains, yet quick
Like the race of wind through leaves of grass, brushing each
Tenderly, seeing it tremble as I tip my hat on my way, wholly admonished,
Joyous, immortal, under the watchful eye of JeanMarie, I am Walt Whitman,
An American, a kosmos, surging and singing,
Knowing and learning, surprising and being surprised
Late into night at the Café Oasis.
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Posted by Steve Croft | November 22, 2019, 4:49 PMmy hands in yours
would that be the fate
or pleasure of life
Mr. Walt Whitman
it would be my pleasure
to discover with your works
so I shall read your poetry
recite aloud your prose
and decide to tarry, wallow or flee
which way I go
depends on the touching
of my soul
would you like to teach me something
about my soul
perhaps explore the heights
perhaps the distance to the moon
and travel to Fairfield
what do you think about that
Mr. Walt Whitman?
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | November 18, 2019, 7:26 AMClear and sweet are moonbeams, my step is light
I bathe myself in the air of this meeting, my shirt is fresh
Not unlike that of men in cities, or of babes newly washed by mothers,
Or like the wind that sprouts in Fairfield,
From the earth, or some adjunct of the earth, the begetter of children
The begetter of mothers and fathers, the begetter of meetings.
Hurrah for the moon, hurrah for Fairfield,
My breath is sweet like lavender
Or some other tincture of flowers known and chosen by apothecaries,
I wander gleefully but full of decorum
In soft anticipation, on leg before the other, one foot
Unrestrained in its race again with the other, again, and again,
Unrestrained, like out meeting will be in Fairfield.
–Walt Whitman
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Posted by Steve Croft | November 18, 2019, 12:00 PMHurrah for Whitman!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 18, 2019, 4:39 PMI like the “tarry, wallow or fee” sequence. Very nice!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 18, 2019, 4:34 PMThank you!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | November 18, 2019, 4:36 PM