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Virtual Lecture: I Contain Multitudes

Walt Whitman, America’s Poet

How did the son of a farmer, grammar school dropout, and penny daily hack writer become the iconic American poet?

Karen Karbiener will discuss Walt Whitman’s upbringing and his revolutionary work, Leaves of Grass.

Karen Karbiener is a scholar, writer, curator, and cultural activist and has been teaching at New York University since 2003. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she has published widely on Whitman, including an edition of Leaves of Grass, two audiobooks on the poet’s life and influence, and a book introducing Whitman’s poetry to children. As an active public scholar, she is invested in bringing complex literary content to a diverse public. A native New Yorker, Karen is president and a founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, a New York City-based nonprofit organization serving as a think tank and enabler of poetry-related events and community activism, including the open-access Tane Poetry Library and New York’s annual marathon reading of Whitman’s epic “Song of Myself.” She has led walking tours of Whitman's New York for over two decades and is currently completing a biography of the poet.

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