Today I get to talk again with a group of young people about a remarkable thing, a revolution in language that began to take place with the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in the second half of the 19th century.
Not many people get to do the same. This is my job today, or at least part of it. I spend fifty minutes with some young people and some poetry.
A world is changing around us, with technology and culture and the environment, but the poems that these two figures managed to put together in their lifetimes will remain. Whitman tells us that he sees us from his far vantage point. Dickinson seems to see herself, and us, in a bog.
In a time that seems to offer an option for every way of looking at the world, I appreciate the comfort of these two poets who recognized the changes in their own times and how an imagination can help us see a bigger picture.
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