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Sun-Down Again

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A
solitary
thrush loafs
about and abandons
its perch in search
of rail
yards and sky
scrapers. Ferry
rides trans
form virtual
tours, binary
code and telephone
towers. Pixilated
visions turn them
selves inside
out. O browning
grass in cosmic
lullabies!

Contents 1 Explanatory Note 2 External Links

[edit] Explanatory Note

By appropriating the song-bird’s voice in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," Walt Whitman uses poetry as a moment of subjective domination of the object, vis-à-vis man’s relation to the natural world.

The poets wrote many computer programs with Ruby that manipulate XML versions of Walt Whitman’s texts. The below program, for example, tokenizes a file containing a specific text:

doc = XML::Document.file(“WhitmanFile.xml”) hash = Hash.new() doc.find(‘//l’).each do |l|           l.content.downcase.split(/[\W\s\d\n]+/].each do |word|                     if hash.has_key?(word)                               hash[word] += 1                     else                               hash[word] = 1                     end           end end hash.sort{|a,b| a[1] <=> b[1]}.each {x puts “#{x[0]} #{x[1]}”}

External links

• Walt Whitman: Online Resources at the Library of Congress
• The Walt Whitman Archive includes all editions of "Leaves of Grass" in page-images and transcription, as well as manuscripts, criticism, and biography
• Walt Whitman Page by Camden County, New Jersey Historical Society
• Works by or about Walt Whitman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Walt Whitman household in NJ in 1880 census
• Walt Whitman letters from the Civil War - taken from the 'Wound Dresser'
• Poems by Walt Whitman An extensive collection of Whitman's poetry
• Poets.org – Biography, related essays, poems, and reading guides from the Academy of American Poets
• MS Lowell 15. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892. Passage to India : autograph manuscript; Washington, 1870. 21s. (21p.) Houghton Library, Harvard University.
• New York Times, January 22, 1882 WHITMAN, POET AND SEER; A REVIEW OF HIS LITERARY SCHEME, WORK, AND METHOD This is made available online for free in the pre-1922 NYT archives.

Sites

• Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site
• Walt Whitman Camden Home Historic Site
• Walt Whitman's grave site at Find A Grave.com