PBS 'American Experience' highlights Walt Whitman

Thanks danbearnyc for the heads up.

Visit PBS's media-rich web site for more info

Bookmark this link, PBS will be streaming on the web after tonight. (how cool is that?) So you can watch it at your leisure.

My affinity for Whitman goes back to high school - and has been part of my intellectual/emotional repetoire my entire life. I even changed my LJ handle for about a year to 'isitandlookout' (after the poem I Sit and Look Out by Whitman). For folks overseas that might not have been exposed to Whitman - he was the first great American poet. Whitman's poetry depicts love and sexuality more earthy and individualistic than any other writer in American poetry. While most biographies refer to him as bisexual - I read his poetry - and hear the longing of a man way ahead of his time. Singing the siren song of sexual and emotional freedom - one hundred years before Stonewall or the modern definition of gays and lesbians.

I know that being exposed to his writing as a young man - changed my understanding of the world.