>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D. C.
[ Silence ]   >> Rob Casper: Hi everybody.
How you doing?   >> Hi.
>> Rob Casper: Hope you're feeling cool here in the Whittall Pavilion
in the midst of an unseasonably hot stretch of early summer here
in Washington D. C. My name is Rob Casper.
I'm the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here
at the Library of Congress.
And I'm thrilled to welcome you to our third literary birthdays event
of the season celebrating the great poet Walt Whitman.
Before we begin, I'll ask you to do what I'm going to make sure I do,
which is to turn off your cell phones
and any electronic devices you have.
They do interfere actually with the AV system and recording.
I also want to let you know
that this program is being recorded for webcast.
And if you participate in any way, you'll give us permission
for future use of the recording.
Also, let me tell you a little bit about the Poetry
and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress.
We are celebrating our 75th year.
We are home to the Poet Warrior Consultant in poetry.
And we put on literary readings, panels, lectures,
and all sorts of great programs here throughout the year.
We do have only one more event at the end of June.
Our last literary birthday celebration of the year.
And then we'll have a little hiatus.   And then in the fall all sorts
of wonderful things will happen including actually a September 30th
District of Literature Festival celebrating D.C. writers past
and present that we're doing with the Pen Faulkner Foundation.
And with the [inaudible] Library so be sure to look out for that.
If you would like to find out more about the events that we run,
you can sign up on our sign-up sheet,
which is right outside in the foyer.
Or you can check us out at www.loc.gov/poetry.
Today we are thrilled to honor one of America's great voices.
What would have been his 194th birthday.
And I imagine no one could be 194 with gusto like Walt Whitman.
You can read more about Whitman
and about our two featured readers Mark Doty
who came down from New York City.
And Sally Keith who came from 2800 Woodley [assumed spelling] Road,
where we both live in the same building.
You can read about them both in our print program.
We are especially excited to have both here
and to celebrate their connection to poems Ralph Waldo Emerson described
as "more deeply American democratic in the interest of political liberty
than those of any other poet."
Mark's forth coming book "What is the Grass,"
details his poetic relationship with Whitman.
And this past semester Sally taught a course
at George Mason University titled "Whitman/Dickson/Influence."
Those are two terrific examples
of the ways contemporary poets honor Whitman's contribution to the art.
A word about our program.
Our two featured readers will get up in alphabetical order
and read their favorite Whitman poems,
as well as connect those poems to their own work.
Following their readings Mark [inaudible] of our Rare Books
and Special Collections Division will say a few words
about our tabletop display
of Walt Whitman's materials in our collection.
And about the invaluable work the division does to ensure
that future generations can connect to the exemplars of our culture.
If you would like to learn more about the Rare Books
and Special Collections Division, you can visit their website
which is www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook .
So with that let me welcome Mark Doty and Sally Keith.
[ Applause ]   >> Mark Doty: Thank you, Rob.
And thank you.
It is a great pleasure to be here today to celebrate the birthday
of our enormous, inescapable, and brilliant uncle.
And when I say our, I misspeak boldly for every American poet.
I think there is no other poet about whom I can so confidently claim
that he is the predecessor of us all.
In 1855, round this time of the year, Walt Whitman walked
into a printer's office in Brooklyn with a sheaf
of manuscripts under his arm.
At that point in his life he had published a temperance novel,
some poems of questionable value, a fair amount of journalism.
And nothing that would prepare one for the power and glory
of what he carried under his arm that day.
We know that he set the first 12 or 13 pages
of that manuscript in type himself.
This is one of the pages which he most certainly set.
It is Section 6 of his signature poem "Song of Myself."
And to my mind it is probably his most famous poem.
But it's also a great banner he carried forward and which continues
to move forward into the future upon
which predicts American poetry to come.
A poem which stakes a great radical claim.
A child said what is the grass?
Fetching it to me with full hands; how could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is anymore than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the lord, a scented gift
and remembrancer designedly dropt, bearing the owner's name someway
in the corners, that we may see and remark and say whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child,
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, and it means,
sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe,
Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass, it may be you transpire
from the breasts of young men,
it may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
t may be you are from old people, and from women,
and from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
and here you are the mothers laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
darker than the colorless beards of old men,
dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
and I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
and the hints about old men and mothers,
and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
the smallest sprouts shows there is really no death,
and if ever there was it led forward life and does not wait at the end
to arrest it, and cease the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward, and nothing collapses,
and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.
Every time I read that poem --
I would like to spend the next 20 minutes talking about it.
But I'm not going to do that.   I simply want to say, you know,
that would have been a great poem had it ended and to die is different
than anyone had supposed.
But it becomes an astonishing poem with the addition of two words.
The first appearance I would guess of the word luckier and in reverse.
And luckier.
And I think about how lucky it might be to be part
of the endless circulation of matter.
Simply to be in the stream of things -- what could be better than that?
That's a plan that goes
against every theological tenant of Walt Whitman's day.
It's [inaudible] that encourages us to celebrate our participation
in the physical world to take joy in being of it.
Well, so I ducked into the closest used bookstore
because you can pretty much count on the fact that in any used bookstore
in the world there will be a copy of "Leaves of Grass."
And sure enough, there it was.   I grabbed the book off the shelf.
And without opening it ran to class.
Opened the book, and discovered that I had purchased --
I'm sure this has happened to you -- someone else's marginal notes,
which could then never again be forgotten.
And -- I'll have that poem in one second.
The danger of technological dependence.
[ Silence ]
[inaudible] I had eye surgery a while back, and I need to use this
because the poems are back lite.
But every now and then, it does not want to cooperate with me.
Ah-hah "What is the Grass?"
On the margin in the used text I purchased without opening --
pale green dutiful vessel.   Some unconvinced student has written
in a clear looping hand isn't it Grass?
[ Laughter ]   How could I answer the child?
I do not exaggerate.   I think of her question for years.
And while first I imagine her the very type
of the incurious revealing the difference between a mind
at rest and one that cannot.
Later I come to imagine that she had faith
in language that was the difference.
She believed that the words settle things the matter need not be looked
into again.
And he who'd written his book over and over nearly ruining it,
so enchanted by what had first compelled him
for him the word settled nothing at all.
And it was when I say before Whitman the word settled nothing at all,
I in fact mean that as a compliment.
It's one of the reasons that "Leaves of Grass" is so very, very large.
So much to say.   So many words necessary.
This is a tiny glitter poem
of Whitman's a mysterious one that I love very much.
It's called "Sparkles From the Wheeel."
Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
withdrawn, I join a group
of children watching -- I pause aside with them.
By the curb toward the edge of the flagging, a knife-grinder works
at his wheel, sharpening a great knife; bending over,
he carefully holds it to the stone-by foot and knee,
with measured treed, he turns rapidly as he presses with light
but firm hand, forth issue, then, in copious golden jets.
Sparkles from the wheel.
The scene and all its belongings-how they seize and affect me!
The sad, sharp-chinned old man, with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band
of leather; myself, effusing
and fluid-a phantom curiously floating-now here absorbed
and arrested; the group, an unminded point, set in a vast surrounding.
The attentive, quite children-the loud, proud,
restive base of the streets.
The low, hoarse purr of the whirling stone-the light-pressed blade,
defusing dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers
Whitman would later rephrase that poem in a way in two lines in a
"Child Said What is the Grass" --
No, I'm sorry -- "I Child Went Forth."
There was a child went forth in which he says
that same thing this way.
Men and women crowding fast in the streets if they are not flashes
and specks what are they?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes
and specks what are they?
That question for Whitman what are we.
What does it mean to be one of anything?
What does it mean to be part of the tribe, part of the group is one
that has been with me for all of my life as a poet as well.
And I'll read you just one poem which is concerned
This is called "A Display of Mackerel."
And where Whitman's poem began presumably
on some city sidewalk watching a knife grinder,
my poem began in the stop and shop in Orleans,
Massachusetts in the fish market.   A display of mackerel.
They lie in parallel rows on ice head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity barred with black bands
which divide the scales radiant sections like seems
of lead in a tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery, prismatics: Think abalone ,
the wildly rainbowed mirror
of a soapbubble sphere, think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor, and not a one in anyway distinguished
from the other -- nothing about them of individuality.
Instead they're all exact expressions of the one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment of heaven's template mackerel essence.
As if, after a lifetime arriving at this enameling,
the jeweler's made uncountable examples, each as intricate
in its oily fabulation a sthe one before.
Suppose we could iridesce, like these and lose ourselves entirely
in the universe of shimmer -- would you want to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed to be lost?   They'd prefer, plainly,
to be flashing participants, multitudinous.
Even now they seem to be bolting forward, heedless of stasis.
They dont care they're dead or nearly frozen, just as presumably,
they didn't care that they were living: All, all for all,
the rainbowed school and it's acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular, or everyone is.
How happy they seem, even on ice, to be together, selfless,
Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]
>> Sally Keith: Thank you.
It's a great pleasure to read here not only on Whitman's birthday
but also with Mark Doty whose own work feels to me
such a brilliant contemporary instance of what men's generosity,
[inaudible] and concern with humanity.
It strikes me as important to begin
by saying Washington D. C. is a great place
to celebrate Whitman's birthday.   Online you can find a guide
to a Walt Whitman walking tour beginning very close to here
at the National Portrait Gallery,
which was formally the U.S. Patent Office.
And during the Civil War it became the makeshift hospital
where Whitman famously tended wounded soldiers.
You'll be led to Ford's Theater,
Freedom Plaza, and the Willard Hotel.
And even for some reason, a stop at the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.
My favorite Whitman monument though can be seen
on the long escalator ride up out of the Dupont North Metro Station.
There as the sky opens framed by the pale stone semi circle above you,
you turn your head to take in the meandering inscription.
Thus in silence in dreams projections, returning resuming,
I thread my way through the hospitals,
the hurt the wounded I pacify with soothing hand.
I sit by the restless all the dark night -- some are so young.
Some suffer so much -- I recall the experience sweet and sad.
Which comes from the end of Whitman's poem "The Wound Dresser."
I find the story of Whitman coming to Washington to search
for his brother George who had been wounded in Fredricksburg
and then staying ten years originally to work
as a nurse incredibly moving.
"Specimen Days" Whitman's autobiographical narrative devotes a
disproportionate section to the Civil War years spent
in and around Washington.   The Patent Office Hospital
which Whitman writes must not pass away without some mention.
He further describes as a strange solemn and with all its features
of suffering and death as sort of fascinating sight.
I go sometimes at night to soothe and relieve particular cases.
Two of the immense apartments are filled with high
and ponderous glass cases crowded with models and miniature
of every kind of utensil, machine or invention it ever entered
Just a bit later in Whitman's narrative I'm taken by the end
of an account of a Calvary camp.
I sit long in my third-story window and look at the scene.
A hundred little things going on.
Peculiar objects connected with the camp
that could not be described any one of them justly
without much minute drawing and coloring in words.
Whitman whose great "Leaves of Grass" was publish and republished
in slightly different versions six times during his life.
Things less of individual experience and more of collectivity.
The great motivation for Whitman
in the Civil War was the hope of a national union.
Recently as I think about and reread "Specimen Days" and "Leaves
of Grass," I'm interested in the writer in Whitman
who was motivated by description.   A hundred little things going on.
Though I have always admired Whitman's magnanimous spirit,
his long reaching lines, his inclusiveness and unceasing passion,
I think now also about the relation between that grandiose Whitman.
And the Whitman sitting in the third store window recording.
And what this might say about the singular poet,
his individual voice carried forth in time.
Through Whitman's observation and attention to details,
you can sense the trajectory of the human spirit.
Our own heritage as writers, thinkers, people who want
to record notes as well as song.
Such combination of detail and grandiosity are evident in one
of my favorite Whitman poems "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean
of Life," which I will now read.
1. As I ebb'd with the ocean of life, as I wended the shores I know,
as I walked where the ripples continuously wash you Paumanok,
where they rustle up horse and sibilant,
where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
the rim the sediment that stands for all the water
and all the land of the globe.
Fascinated my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow
and those slender windows, chaff, straw, splinters of wood,
weeds and the see-glutton, scum, scales from the shining rocks,
leaves of the sea lettuce, left by the tide, miles walking,
the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok there
and then as I thought the old thought
of likenesses these you presented to me you fish-shaped island,
as I wended the shores I know,
as I walked with that electric self seeking types.
2. As I wend to the shores I know not, as I list to the dirge,
the voices of men and women wrecked, as I inhale the impalpable breezes
that set in upon me, as the ocean so mysteriously rolls toward me closer
and closer, I to but signify the utmost a little washed-up drift,
a few sands and dead leaves to gather, gather and merge myself
as part of the sands and drift.
Oh baffled balked bent to the very earth.
Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have
not once had the least idea who or what I am,
but that before all my arrogant poems the real me stands
yet untouched, untold, although unreached, withdrawn far,
mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
with peals of distant ironical laughter
at every word I have written, pointing in silence to these songs
and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood anything,
not a single objective and that no man ever can, nature here in sight
of the sea taking advantage of me to dart; upon me and sting me,
because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
3. You oceans both I close with you,
we murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift,
knowing not why, these little shreds indeed standing
for you and me and all.
You friable shore with trails of debris, you fish-shaped island,
I take what is underfoot, what is yours is mine my father.
I too Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float,
and been; washed on your shores, I too am but a trail of drift
and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you,
you fish-shaped island.
I throw myself upon your breast my father, I cling to you
so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm till you answer me something.
Kiss me my father.
Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,
breath to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy.
4. Ebb, ocean of life, the flow will return,
cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,
endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny me not,
rustle not up so horse and angry against my feet
as I touch you or gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you and all, I gather for myself
and for this phantom looking down where we; lead,
and following me and mine.
Me and mine, loose windows, little corpses, froth, snowy white,
and bubbles, see, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, see,
the prismatic colors glistening and rolling, tufts of straw, sands,
fragments, buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
from the storm, the long calm the darkness, the swell, musing,
pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,
up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,
a limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,
drifted at random, just as much for us that sobbing dirge of nature,
just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets, we,
capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,
you up there walking or sitting, whoever you are,
"As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," is a poem describing the sea.
A poem speaking into the sea a description of rhythm
and detailed composition so that ultimately the sea reflects back,
and we find uncovered the poet himself.
That before my all my arrogant poems the real me stands yet.
The poet that is who looks down into the grains of sand only
to ask boundless questions, questions about poetry.
As the sea creative genius personifies where Whitman came from,
a mother and father, yes, but also a world rich in contradiction.
It also assures continuity as the repetitive mention of the ebb
and flow punctuate the poem.
I love the line at the end of the second section in which
after confessing to have known nothing, Whitman explains
that nature has taken advantage of him.
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
This poem tethered by a description I might describe
as painterly oscillates between knowing and not knowing
as it contemplates a like the failure and vitality of poetry.
The intricate details chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds,
and the sea gluten, and as we end prone and drifts
at the feet of the sea the random.
It is easy for me to sense the process in this poem.
The possibility that the poem came to know what it now means.
A descriptive immersion in the sea is how it happened.
And to this descriptive immersion I can relate.
And to connect in which I can relate and to connect ways
in which I have learned and have been inspired by Whitman I want
to read you two poems of my own that might allow for thinking
about Whitman in terms of ekphrastic.
Ekphrastic poems are poems that are written after art
or so we think of them now.
And it's fairly common in contemporary journals
and collections to find ekphrastic poems.
Originally though, ecfastris [inaudible] so speaking
out referred only to the description in a poem.
Say there's a man and he speaks out to the sea.
Listen again briefly to Whitman in another clip from "Specimen Days."
And still the broken clear and clouded heaven
and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft it's radiant
patches over all.   Who paints the scene?
The sudden partial panic of the afternoon at dusk.
Who paint the irrepressible advance
of the second division of the third corp?
Who show what moves there in the shadows fluid
and firm to save the armies name?   Perhaps the nation.
Between ourselves and our own vision what literally we see
to desire a medium is to desire a way to surprise ourselves
by finding ourselves or at least pieces therein.
As the ocean so mysteriously rolls toward me closer and closer,
I too but signify at the utmost a little washed up drift.
The first poem I'll read "Lullaby on the Marsh" is written
after a Martin Johnson Heade painting of a salt marsh
which is in the National Gallery.   He lived from 1819 to 1904.
And what interest me about his work a part from the pure pleasure I take
in looking is his association with and challenge
to the Hudson River School in his interrogation of the picturesque.
"Lullaby on the Marsh."
Slack at the end of the lasso rope before the wrist is snapped,
shape of the wave underneath the wave before the crescent
topples over.
Pink stain on the sky with night so soon to drop.
Finding the focal point and then the moment fading away back out.
Having forgotten the pallet.   Having just looked past.
So slightly obsessed.
Not that the scene follows any of the rules.
Not that the scene is picturesque.
The grass and the marsh looking particularly sharp, be gentle now.
Achilles by now too angry to eat as you already know.
Achilles pacing by the ships while the men feast await nothing slack.
The tips of the grass turned by an invisible wind.
Prayer that the arrow stay in the house marked north.
Prayer that the arrow not flip, not detach, not backward glance.
Be gentle, be good to yourself.   With no one rushing in to interrupt.
With no good math for finding the middle.
The weight of the moment has felt in the straddle where vectors converge.
Where the shallow water will still not collapse.
And men who have pooled in the ill grass to insulate their houses.
And men who have pulled the thatch grass to mulch their summer beds.
That now the haystacks have become backdrops for the deep dusk light.
Where men have raked the hay, cut the hay into piles.
Having worked a slow careening with the long poles
as if manipulating the order of the scene.
All of this as if a epiphany were not a question.
Middle world, dream scape soft voice kept soft.
Knowing the men will carry the haystacks on [inaudible].
Knowing in winter across the ice on sleds.
Imagining the makeshift rues shielding the rooftops.
The men tearing across the ice burning rope in their hands.
Moment in which Achilles still is stewing.
Achilles refusing and refusing to eat.
Moment you already know Achilles and the ambrosia.
So again fate might be complete.   Book steadily.
Moment before the action takes place.
Elsewhere light on the edge of a marsh hawk wing.
Not a sound.   Not even a tick.
The waters heavy edge not leaving one mark.
Always the moment afterward when the painting is done.
The painting propped there flat.
Wordless note at the hem end before beginning the next verse.
The fade out.   The unusual shade at dusk.
Be gentle.   Years past.
Blue and low the whole of the world almost seeps.
Sit back. Stop thinking find some other way to coax yourself.
There's a slack in the loop and wave in the wave.
Tonight the risen moon pale blank sunk deep in the sky.
Keeps on promising sleep.   And I'm going to read one more poem.
And this is a poem called "The Hunters."
And it's written after -- it's sort of a bit less I would say connected
to Whitman, but -- except in the description,
but it's called "The Hunters."
And it's written after Pieter Brueghel painting "The Return
of the Hunters" 1565, which you may have seen.
The hunters.
The return didn't flutter what body it had attempt it moved
in slow progression.
Their legs leaving hollowed dents in snow.
The dogs behind them hanging their heads then further something
between desperation and attempt.
Here the knot on the nerve in my neck mark me.
My armor incomplete.
The dark color shuffling thicker than cards and thicker than rope.
And the quicker the speed the harder my hope.
The hunters call them nights call their armor burlap sacks.
Call their swords wooden shafts.   Have almost cleared the wood.
Count the few bare elm.
They dodge them according to gravitational chants.
The rods go down with the slant of the hill and the hurry
of dogs sounds on their heels.   They keep it at their backs.
Walk in these woods.   Leave that.
I'd pull down my woolen cap, cinch my tired eyes to my feet.
What can they wear that would let me.
When I am handed over what will I speak.
Can the village know.
Couched in hills that hold a solemn hum
against the thicker, blacker beat.
And the cottages line the rectangular lake.
And the lake is frozen.
And the children unaware of their pattern gleefully skate.
The wind is the only resistance they know.
Mark me. Death is the pebble.
They slip from the bridge as we finish descending the hill.
Slipped by the unknown foot.   Listen it hits leave that.
Listen the children are shrieking shall not shall not pull
down my woolen cap.   Now Sunday morning we return.
No children.   The steeple inextricable.
The given in a village shape.   We look to it.
Tomorrow and mercy, mercy death is the ghost the choir the almost sound
rising up.
Belt, breast plate, helmet, my sword of the skin beats too fast.
Walk in these woods.
There were three birds wing touching contented.
I am returning, I'll sit by the fire with my only wife.
I'll go for bread by dawn and wood by dusk.
I'll study the bird that is left cutting winters only sky.
Lonely or at last.
Mercy mark me to held it feathered and nothing.
I try. Thank you very much   [ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon.
I'd like to thank the Poetry and Literature Center here
at the Library of Congress for organizing this wonderful event.
And for inviting me to come here to display some
of the Walt Whitman works that we have in the Rare Book
and Special Collections Division.
The Library of Congress holds the finest Whitman collection
in the world.
And that's largely because we own two major collector's collections.
And those are the Carolyn Wells Houghton collection
and the Charles Fineburg collection.
The Carolyn Wells Houghton collection we acquired
in 1942 from her.   It was a bequest.
And she had built it mainly to support her work
in crafting her landmark concise bibliography
of the works of Walt Whitman.
And when we acquired that collection, we acquired with it all
at once 100 copies of "Leaves of Grass."
She was very thorough.
And another interesting thing that came with that were three copies
of the 1902 addition of Walt Whitman's "Letters to My Mother."
We already had two copies of that here at the Library that came
in through copyright deposit.
And there were only five copies total produced.
So she had gone about collecting the other three that were circulating.
The other collection is the Charles Fineburg collection
which the Library started to acquire in 1966.
His collection was made up mainly of first additions
of Walt Whitman's writings.   And it included I think I read
around 1100 copies or 1100 manuscripts.
So it was one of the largest manuscript collections
in the world of his writings as well.
And you may have read in the Washington Post recently that along
with that collection was also his haversack.
The bag that he had slung over his shoulder.
Carried goodies for soldiers that he was carrying
for in the hospital here in D. C. And that's going
on exhibit I believe next month in our main exhibit hall.
One of the more interesting aspects of this serendipitous event
that sometimes occurs in libraries when you have two major collections,
centers around an 1856 meeting
between Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Thoreau had gone to Whitman's Brooklyn home.
And they had a two hour meeting where they talked
and walked around Brooklyn.
And at the end of that meeting, Thoreau had presented Whitman
with a copy of his most recent book "A Week
on the Concord Merrimack Rivers" -- signed copy.
And Whitman presented him with a copy, his latest copy of the "Leaves
of Grass," signed as well.   And at that point, they parted ways.
And the books eventually disappeared.
They were sold.
But after we acquired the two major collections the Houghton
and the Fineburg collections,
we discovered that we had those in our collections.
Both of them had come together again.
And were now living about five shelves apart.
So you're welcome to come up here and have a look at all these items
that I've assembled for the exhibit.
I would just ask that you don't bring any food
or drink near them, please.
And if there's something that you'd like to have a closer look at,
just let me know, and I'll be happy to show it to you, okay?
[ Applause ]   >> Rob Casper: Thank you, Mark.
And thanks to Mark Doty and Sally Keith for a terrific event.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.