uncle walt

In answer to Ashmae's question, "I sound my barbaric YAWP from the rooftops of the world" is famous to me because it comes from one of my favorite parts of "Dead Poets Society." Robin Williams, playing Mr. Keating, an English professor, scrawls this phrase on the chalkboard while pronouncing it. He follows up with a lovely attributive tag: "W.W. Uncle Walt again." So it's a slightly-off version of a line from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Line 1330 (in the very last section, 52): "I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world."

I've not read "Song of Myself" in its entirety, but I'm prone to think it wouldn't be too bad of an endeavor. Here are the first few lines:

"I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass."

Makes me think of what Wendell Berry said about loafing--that it leads to conversation.

Happy, snowy Thursday!

I'll have to write more later about my powderpuff football adventures of Tuesday. I've been buried beneath end-of-term grading (completely my own fault) and I'm now beginning to resurface. Breathe.