I Hear America Singing

Was it the golden light gracing the whole of New York Harbor as he crossed Brooklyn Ferry? Was it the new sensibility - expansive, liberating, imperative - he found in the pages of Emerson? Or was it the never-to-be-forgotten kiss upon his child's cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the Revolution, who held him high in the air during a July 4th celebration that bound Walt Whitman to his eternal muse?  

America! Not the bordered geo-political region, but America the idea, embodied by a seeking, hungry multitude engaged with this new old land, a multitude - no, multitudes - which this poet, in an alchemy of sensuous empathy, welcomed into himself, and contained.

Poem by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman by Stanley Spenger. Music by Justin Joseph Jones. Movie by Joe Christiano.