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Walt Whitman Birthplace Association

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association will be burying a Time Capsule on Friday, August 5 at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site, 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station at 1 p.m. The ceremony will also commemorate William T. Walter, Ph.D. (1931-2020) for his long-time leadership and lasting contributions to WWBA as Trustee, Officer, and Member (1981-2020).

The Time Capsule will contain Whitman memorabilia, related artifacts, written historic texts and books along with newspaper articles of the current times reflecting a significant economic, political, or social news event.

A boulder will be placed at the site with a commemorative plaque inscribed: “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.” W.W., Song of Myself, Section 52.

This project was initiated during the bicentenary year of Walt’s birth, 2019. The time capsule will be opened during Walt’s 250th birthday celebration in 2069.

The ceremony will take place under a tent with refreshments served. No registration is required, all are welcome.

For more information, call 631-427-5240 or visit https://www.waltwhitman.org/walt-whitman-birthplace-state-historic-site-time-capsule.

This project was made possible through the financial support of the Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, and the continued support of New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

UPDATED MARCH 1, 2021
The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association has announced the 2021 and 2022 Long Island Poets of the Year. Congratulations to Cliff Bleidner (2021) and Matt Pasca (2022)!
“The excellence of their poetry works, their active role as supporters and promoters for the Long Island poetry community, and their outstanding awards and recognition contribute to their honor,” said the WWBA in a press release.
Cliff Bleidner will offer a virtual poetry reading in April 2021.
Matt Pasca will offer a poetry reading in April 2022. 
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Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in Huntington Station is seeking nominations for its 2021 Long Island Poet of the Year award. This award is given annually by the WWBA to a Long Island poet recognized regionally for the excellence of his or her work and who is active in supporting and promoting poetry on Long Island.
The nomination should consist of a brief bio/CV, including publications, artistic engagements, and community activities, and a two page sample of the poet‘s work.
This material should be submitted by email attachment to [email protected], or by mail to:
Executive Director, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association
246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station, New York 11746-4148.
Nominations must be received by February 19th. Self-nominations are not accepted. The WWBA Board of Trustees Program Committee will choose the awardee by March 12th. The award will be presented at a reception-reading in April.

Photo courtesy of WWBA

The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site in Huntington Station is now accepting submissions for its 35th annual Student Poetry Contest!

CONTEST THEME: Lessons Learned

The theme derives from Walt Whitmans poem below. Please also read the poem, “History Lesson,” written by Natasha Tretheway.

ELIGIBILITY: Students in grades 3 to 12 from anywhere around the world. Poems submitted in languages other than English must be accompanied by an English translation.
CONTEST: Write a free verse poem about a lesson you have learned

‘STRONGER LESSONS’
Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?Have you not learn’d the great lessons of those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?
– Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass” (1881-1882)
Entries Must Be Received By Friday, March 19th.  Full Guidelines Available on Our Website. Click Here. Please read all guidelines before submitting entry. Email Education Director Dr. Kelly Ronayne with questions and submissions: [email protected] SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED VIA EMAIL ONLY. A Video Award Ceremony featuring a nationally known poet will be released on Sunday, June 13th, 2021. There are multiple winners from each grade. Winners will be notified in late April.

A crowd gathers at the birthplace of Walt Whitman, where Whitman’s legacy was discussed from Aug. 9 to 11. Photos from Cynthia Shor

‘O Captain, My Captain’

By Walt Whitman

Whitman’s poem “O Captain, My Captain” is an elegy written to honor Abraham Lincoln in his work for the country in keeping it unified, said Cynthia Shor, executive director of Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. 

Like all poems, the tribute contains a turning point that reveals an overarching meaning. See if you can find Whitman’s message in this poem, written in 1865, the year of Lincoln’s death. 

O Captain! My Captain!

our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack,
the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear,
the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel,
the vessel grim and daring:

      But O heart! heart! heart!

       O the bleeding drops of red,

         Where on the deck my Captain lies,

          Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain!

rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

       Here captain! dear father!

         This arm beneath your head;

           It is some dream that on the deck,

            You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer,
his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm,
he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound,
its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

       Exult, O shores, and ring O bells!

        But I with mournful tread,

         Walk the deck my Captain lies,

           Fallen cold and dead.

The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association hosted its first three-day international conference in honor of Whitman’s legacy. The event was held at Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station.

“All the presentations opened new roads into interpreting Whitman, whose words are still relevant today in his Bicentennial 200th birthday year,” Executive Director Cynthia Shor said. “Plans are being made for a follow-up conference in 2021.” 

About 50 guests each day from both the local community and other parts of New York, such as Queens, attended to see 25 international presenters share their research about Whitman’s impact on cultural, social, historical, literary and gender issues from his lifetime to our lifetime. 

Presenters traveled from six countries and 10 states to discuss topics such as translating Whitman’s poems into other languages, the use of his poems in contemporary advertising and the influence of mesmerism and Darwinism in his writing. Creative expressions were also included through poetry readings and open mic, films and music celebrating Whitman. There were nine panels in total, moderated by the association’s board members. Local Walt Whitman “personator” Darrel Blaine Ford dressed as Whitman and posed for pictures with attendees.

The keynote speaker was Professor Ed Folsom, the Roy J. Carver Professor of English at The University of Iowa. His panel discussion was titled “Whitman Growing Old” and he spoke about how Whitman confronted death in his poetry and how he still speaks to poets today, long after his death. 

“There has been a gradual, almost imperceptible, shift in our view of Whitman and his work recently, as if we have been searching for the Whitman who can address and respond to a growing cultural despair instead of (or maybe in addition to) the Whitman who spurs on an endless optimism,” Folsom said. “Americans are, after all, at a far different period of the nation’s history than that which he experienced, a point where some of the democratic payoff that Whitman promised should be far more apparent than it is, a point where many of us begin to feel a need for a different Whitman, one more tempered in his outlook, older, pointing not the way to a fully achieved democratic future but rather one who can guide us about how to live in a diminished present on an earth of diminishing resources, in a society where the same old problems — of racial injustice, of grotesquely unfair wealth distribution, of continuing gender discrimination — just keep resurfacing, as virulent as ever.” 

Folsom is the editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, co-director of the Whitman Archive and editor of the Whitman Series at The University of Iowa Press. He is the author or editor of numerous books and essays on Whitman and other American writers. 

The association wishes hearty congratulations to all who took part and is delighted to have hosted an event shedding light on Whitman’s tremendous body of work and his charismatic personality.

This program was made possible with funds from Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation, New York State Parks, Suffolk County, Town of Huntington, New York State Council on the Arts and Huntington Arts Council. The association offers special thanks and appreciation to these organizations for their continued support. 

Whitman’s birthplace museum is open to the public seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. After Labor Day, the site is open Wednesday to Friday, 1 to 4 p.m. and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. The site is located at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station. For more information call 631-427-5240 or visit www.waltwhitman.org.

The 300-book collection, acquired by late Northport resident Marvin Feinstein, contains several first editions

The Feinstein family stands with a Walt Whitman impersonator in front of new Norman and Jeanette Gould Library collection. Photo by Sara-Megan Walsh

The unveiling of a new library collection at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site has allowed it to lay claim to having the second largest Whitman-related book collection in the world.

The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association publicly celebrated its acquisition of approximately 300 Whitman-related books collected by late Northport resident Marvin Feinstein April 26.

“This collection will be of tremendous value to Walt Whitman scholars and historians,” said George Gorman, deputy regional director of New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. “It’s an amazing treasure.”

“Ever since I knew Marvin, I knew how much he admired the writing of Walt Whitman.”
– Miriam Feinstein

Miriam Feinstein said her husband, Marvin, was a lifelong book collector turned bookseller. Together, the couple ran M&M Books selling out-of-print, rare volumes at large book fairs up and down the East Coast since the early 1980s.

“Ever since I knew Marvin, I knew how much he admired the writing of Walt Whitman,” she said. “It was always his dream to acquire a full collection of Walt Whitman’s books.”

She recalled how almost every day, her husband, would set off and “invariably” come home with a bag of books. Sometimes he would purchase books by Whitman or one of his other favorite writers, Mark Twain.

Upon her husband’s passing, Feinstein and her sons, David and Allen, reached out to the WWBA offering to donate 40 Whitman-related books, according to Executive Director Cynthia Shor — one of which was a volume containing the complete works of Walt Whitman.

The family then offered to donate half of the remaining collection, about 250 books, which had been appraised at $20,000. The collection contains many rare books including 25 first editions, among which are “Leaves of Grass” and “November Boughs.” The association was only able to come up with funding to purchase 10 additional books and sent Shor to the Feinstein’s home to pick them out.

“This collection will be of tremendous value to Walt Whitman scholars and historians.”
– George Gorman

“When I got there I realized there was not a best book, they were all the best books,” Shor said. “I came back and said, ‘We have to do something more than this. We have to secure this for history.’”

WWBA Trustee Jeffrey Gould stepped forward to donate $10,000 through his Jeffrey S. Gould Foundation to acquire the entire collection, which will become known as “The Norman and Jeanette Gould Library” in honor of his parents.

Jeffrey Gould said his parents started up a publishing company in Queens during the 1950s, like Whitman, and ran their own printing presses.

“It’s such an amazing parallel to our own lives,” he said. “We can help spread the word of literacy with Walt’s magnificent writings.”

The collection will be housed and preserved in a bookcase on the birthplace’s premises, among its other exhibits in the main hall. It will be available to the public for scholarly research, historic documentation and those who generally appreciate Whitman’s writing.

Trustee Tom Wysmuller said with this addition, the birthplace’s collection of Whitman-related books is second largest only to the Library of Congress.

“They don’t have to go to Washington D.C. anymore, they can come right here,” Wysmuller said. “You can come here and steep yourself in history.”