Walt Whitman is all over the place. Sort of. Hopefully these recent Levi’s ‘Go Forth’ commercials will spark some renewed interest from a new generation of Americans.

Walt Whitman Age 37

Anyway, I was in the park last week and I came across the following plaque on a bench:

"I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! Penny M. Azar 1950 -1993"

So what’s odd about this? Well the quote, “I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!” is from the Walt Whitman poem To think of Time. I suppose what’s odd is that I actually knew this upon seeing it.

So who is Penny M. Azar? A generous donor to our fair parks? A cursory internet search wasn’t much help.

Regardless, its nice to see Walt out in public. And while I’m not sure if I approve of Levi’s decision to exploit Whitman’s unique take on that which is America simply to capitalize on the current haute Americana trend, anything that introduces stoned couch-dwelling denizens and other uninitiated types to the quintessential American poet can’t be all bad.

Did you know:

Whitman’s vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich and Gary Snyder.[145] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was the model for the character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman’s death.