Walt Whitman Round-up

Poetry/Wizardry

Wizards have long been at the heart of every real shift in American poetics.

This is why I'm glad that the National Book Association has recently recognized one of our best wizards, Keith Waldrop, as Best Wizard 2010.

(Click the wizard to submit your wizard poetry.)







(Guess which one is the wizard .)




Married to the famous lady-wizard, Rosmarie Waldrop, Keith is proud to represent this class of human being that has done so much work for the dark arts of poetry.

(Waldrop has officially reclaimed the title of "Wizard of Poetry" from Ghostface Killah.)

From Walt Whitman, King of the Wizards, to the wizard-poet Charles Olson, we salute you.

"They do not think whom they souse with spray."

Once again.

Who's that man?

To all you poets out there who were looking forward to old age merely so that you could grow a beard, run around naked, strewing butterflies and writing erotic love letters to Abraham Lincoln, look the death of your dreams in it's cold dead face:


Darrel Blaine Ford is a Walt Whitman impersonator of great renown, posing here with the inimitable, somewhat uncomfortable-looking Billy Collins. If you're getting married, having a birthday, or just planning to go bathe with some other young men and need a 28th...don't look for him under your bootsoles, he has an e-mail address: waltwhitmanofli@aol.com.

But just in case you thought this was indicative of a larger trend that you've been missing out on, you're right.

The greats have returned to the 21st Century and are available for one-on-one conversations, including: Galileo, Mother Goose, Amelia Earhart, Sojourner Truth (!!NEW!!), Abraham Lincoln, and much more.