The Twitterfall on the right might seem utterly random: we go from traffic news, to events at Walt Whitman schools and shopping malls, to the most butchered W quotes (the other night something came up that seemed to be Kanye West channeling Ginsberg channeling Whitman channeling us–quite a ride).
But one aspect of the T-Fall remains utterly predictable: at night in Charleston, SC we get voices from around the world. As we sleep, Russia, China, Spain, Italy, Japan all whisper Whitman in our electronic ears. Whitman would have loved that, and not only because he sang the technologies of his day in poem after poem. We didn’t read Whitman’s “Salut Au Monde!”–one of the many poems I wish we had time for. But if you get a chance, take a look at that massive chant, a chant not only to America, and not to Democracy alone, but to all the people of the world. The world responds in kind.
