WhitmanWhitman, The Musical!

Check out the one-man musical on Walt Whitman! (OC Register)

Whitman, The Online Class!

I've almost finished the free Harvard EdX online Walt Whitman class found at: https://www.edx.org/course/poetry-america-whitman-harvardx-ampox-3

It's part of their archived Poetry in America series which includes poetry of Early New England and Nature and Nation (all Northeastern obsessed poetries; hopefully more to come that’s less regional).

The course is set out over four weeks. The reading load gets harder as you go. The online experience focuses on learning to annotate poems and the site has a special program for that. Either it doesn’t work in my iPad or it’s turned off in the archived experience. I'm using my Collected Works book anyway. There is not much over reading (essays, other similar poets) but there is plenty of interesting video hours you can spend on poem group commentary, readings and a tour of New York which shows mostly a woman pointing at buildings.

I am finding that the class is helping me with aspects of the novel I'm working on. I have to say, like other women over 40 (who make up a large part of the Harvard class cast), I'm enjoying Whitman much more now.

In fact, these two quotes from "Song of Myself seemed appropriate to point out, this one due to living in the Internet-age:

“I speak the pass-word primeval.”

And this one in regards to discussions here around mindfulness, sympathy and empathy:

“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.” 

Over the last few weeks, I've mentioned online classes and Mp3 lectures from The Great Courses company. I wanted to mention I’ve also used Udemy. And here's an important tip I left out earlier: don’t freak out when you sign up and see courses prices at $150. Just wait for the email sale–it comes every day or so–and inevitably courses come down to anywhere from $19 to $40! It’s some kind of masochistic sticker-shock marketing they seem to be doing.

Also check out Slideshare on LinkedIn as another resource for poetry learners and teachers that's free!