"Is it Whitman? Who hears this voice hears a man. Out of the text, out of
the abandonment of song, a living voice arises, transubstantiated. How
glorious to hear him, whoever he might be. He reads the first four lines
of a six-line poem called “America” (why only four? A revision of the
poem? Or was that all the time the wax cylinder allotted? Does this
elision itself constitute an abandonment of song?). Decease calls him
forth. He reads the poem that is the namesake of the nation in which he
had such mystical faith, such metaphysical hope. For the duration of the
recording, the tension between orality and text is resolved. He springs
from the pages into our arms."
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