Two Settings of Walt Whitman
Duration - 8:00
Instrumentation - baritone+ piano

“He is America.”

- Ezra Pound, “What I feel about Walt Whitman”, 1909

 

These songs were written with “America 250” in mind. America is indeed like Whitman, who describes himself in perhaps his best-known poem, “Song of Myself”, as being self-contradictory and containing multitudes. These two (seemingly) completely incongruous texts, one cosmic in its visionary egalitarianism and another vitriolically dehumanizing, were both published by Whitman in 1855 and 1874 respectively, but belong just as much to contemporary America so far as our social, in this case racial, incongruities remain insufficiently addressed. Progress has been made but there is more work to be done.

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