Celebrating L.I.'s 'Good Gray Poet'

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I couldn’t believe my ears: The bard of 19th century America, Walt Whitman (1819-1892), was bellowing lines from “America” in his actual voice:

“Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young and old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love.”


It was as if I were hearing Sophocles or Shakespeare speaking. It was, for this one-time English literature major, a momentous occasion.

In the late 1800s, Thomas Edison recorded Whitman on a phonograph as he read his poetry, but most of the recordings were destroyed in a storm. The five lines from “America” survived.

I heard the recording at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Museum in West Hills, in Suffolk County, while on vacation earlier this month. My wife and I took our kids to this hallowed site, a two-story, cedar-shingled farmhouse built by Whitman’s father, Walter Sr., which has stood for nearly two centuries.

Once, cornfields stretched in all directions around the house. According to our knowledgeable museum guide, the fields formed a flat plain, providing a clear sightline to the Long Island Sound from the home’s second story. Now tall trees obstruct the view.

I treaded lightly over the farmhouse’s creaky wooden floors, wondering why I’d never been there before. I love poetry, and here was the birthplace of one of the world’s great poets, on Long Island, where I’ve lived nearly all my life.

If you haven’t been to the birthplace, you really must go, if only to better understand the Island’s storied past. It is a wonderful little museum run by the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, half-hidden on Old Walt Whitman Road, a tributary of the much-larger Walt Whitman Road, which leads to the chic Walt Whitman Mall.

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