11 September 2014

Textual clarification

For the Op.123, I did not use any complete Whitman poem (not that there would have been anything wrong with that), but selected an assortment of lines from the sixth (final) stanza of "The Return of the Heroes," and a streamlined selection from the celebrated "A child said, What is the grass?" passage (also the sixth stanza) from the magnificent Song of Myself.

Song of Myself is a poem which someday I should like to set in its entirety.

2 comments:

jochanaan said...

All of *Song of Myself*? What, 40+ pages? That would be some composition!

Karl Henning said...

Aye, it Will Make Quite a Large PiecE (Don't Know What's Up With The Caps....)