♪I'm a LOOOOOSER♫

Alright, I apologize. I realize I have slacked off greatly in my blogging this past month. With the holiday season comes my most depressed time of the year, and I simply do not have the kind of energy to maintain a blog. However, I believe my brief(ish) hiatus is over, and I will begin posting with much more frequency. I sincerely hope that all of your holiday experiences were filled with joy and good food! I must say, my aunt Wei-chi made the most stunning crab cakes I have ever tasted. MMMMMmmmm good!

I realize that I usually have some relation to poetry in the first section of my blog, but I really don't feel that food poetry would be quite appropriate. I also just wrote up an entire blog with poetry from my great-great-great-grandmother. I erased it because I realized you all probably don't care about her. I will try to focus on more relevant things. It's bad enough I subject you to my ramblings let alone the ramblings of an ancestor. I think I would like some feedback. What type of poetry or specific poet or topic would you like to read about? I will try to honor any requests you make (within reason!).

When I was about three years old, I really started getting interested in Abraham Lincoln (don't ask me, I was an odd child). I have carried this obsession throughout life, though I have lost in the recesses of my mind most of the information I used to retain on his life. Naturally, one of my favorite poems of the day was "Oh, Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman because it is about Lincoln.

Walt Whitman was a man of many talents. He was employed in trades from printing, to teaching, to journalism, and, for a brief time, he was clerk for the Department of the Interior. He began his working life at the age of 11 when he was pulled out of school to help support his family. It was when he began work as a printer at age 12 that he began his love affair with written language. He was mostly self-taught. He was a strong abolitionist, and even developed a "free soil" newspaper. He was influential in the lives of the wounded often giving his own salary to pay for gifts and supplies for them.He left Washington D.C. for Camden in order to care for his dying mother and brother.  He suffered a stroke in the mid 1870s and found returning to Washington D.C. impossible. He lived in Camden for the last of his days.

O Captain My Captain

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.