Whitman Speaks for This Kansas Based Artist

I once found a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, at a garage sale near the house where I grew up, that I still have today (that was maybe 15 or so years ago). It cost like a dollar or something, and the lady who I bought it from said, "that is quite a deal for a book like that" or something. Which I took to mean that if I had never read Walt Whitman before (I had not extensively) I was in for a treat. It is a 1931 edition with a nice Whitman-esque font on the side and thick rough cut pages. That is the part I really like - the thick paper and the rough cut that forms an uneven edge when viewed from the side. It makes it seem much older than it is, like it could of been around in Whitman's time.

So,... to that lady at the garage sale if by some odd chance she would ever read this I say: I do appreciate this book, and have kept it with me all this time. The life of a book is often a story of it's own, not to mention the story inside the book.

I like to read Leaves of Grass randomly, just opening it up and flipping through and finding poems I might not have read before, or re-reading my favorites, or re-reading ones that grab me in a way that they never did before. Perhaps this happens because I have grown in understanding of the world since I last read a poem that I never cared for. Musical albums sometimes work like that too, when I do not dig it at first, but at a later moment in my life it really blows my mind. 

Part of the reason for this post was to share this Whitman poem I found for the first time today when I was reading Leaves of Grass. Me being what I would say is a 'modern' painter, I sometimes get funny looks or responses when I tell other artists I meet (who are not from here) that I am from Kansas. One man even said, "I look at this painting and I think this guy is from South America maybe, but not Kansas." Another artist I knew who is from another country, after we had imbibed a few drinks, he even got into a laughing fit, imagining me in Kansas, blogging away about modern art and trying to create all this modern artwork. I did not understand what was so funny. I do now, just because it is not an uncommon response (and I forgive him because he was in the moment). 

I often find that Whitman can express ideas and thoughts I have had before in a much more eloquent way than I ever could (not all thoughts, just some). So via Walt Whitman, this is my response to all the people who would laugh at a modern artist who is from Kansas. (Yes I know he says the Missouri river but this is where I grew up, in Eastern Kansas near the Missouri river/border of Kansas. Also technically I was born in Missouri and have lived there on 3 different occasion in Kansas City locations).

OTHERS MAY PRAISE WHAT THEY LIKE

Others may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the
   western prairie-scent,
And exudes it all again. 

- Walt Whitman