The Write Step with R. Jeffreys and More

This has been an exciting week! On Thursday I read with a talented bunch of poets for the Walt Whitman Birthday Bash in Conroe, Texas; on Friday I found out that I won a coveted Lone Star College System Writing Award; and on Saturday, along with my beaux and the other authors of Mark Miller's One Series, I was interviewed by Mark Miller and Giovanni Gelati, of Gelati's Scoop. As well, I was able to show my sillier side in a blog interview by the wonderful Lady Krishna, of Journey with Books, and gorgeous reviews of both Six Weeks to Yehidah and My Yehidah appeared in Chiron, the Newsletter of the C.G. Jung Foundation of Ontario.

For week after next, I am looking forward to being interviewed on Blogtalk Radio by the talented and eloquent R. Jeffreys of The Write Step on May 23rd at 6:30 PM EST. I hope you'll be able to listen in!

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Nine (Whitman)

Walt Whitman

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Every year, The Montgomery Literary Arts Council hosts a Walt Whitman Birthday Reading in Conroe, Texas. This year, on 5/10/12 at 3 PM at LSC-Montgomery, Bruce Noll will present, Pure Grass, a dramatic program composed of excerpts from Whitman's Leaves of Grass. At 7:00 PM, a group of twenty poets, including yours truly, will gather at The Corner Pub to each read one poem of our own and one of Whitman's. The ever affable and always festive Dave Parsons will emcee.

This week I will memorize the "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," the poem I intend to read on the tenth. I was recently reminded how much I love this poem when I heard Lois P. Jones interview Neil DeGrasse Tyson for Poets Cafe. It's a great interview. I highly recommend taking the time to listen to it.

Please feel free to leave comments about the poems even if you are not memorizing them. It's a huge inspiration to me to hear what you think! Here's last week's posting, if you want to leave comments on  William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds ": The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Eight. Also, if you're new to the blog, please check out the first Mnemosyne Post. And feel free to suggest poems! I always learn the most from the poems I would have never thought to select myself.


Have a great week, everyone. May our time among the stanzas be filled with joy!

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.