Dialogues with Walt Whitman for the New American Millennium:: A New Song of These United States

By Michael Sweda

Walt Whitman, Americas eternal and greatest poet, returns on the eve of September 11, 2001, to pay a visit to his chosen Camerado, Michael Sweda, in order to inspire the completion of a great American work to complement his Leaves of Grass and to honor America, its people, and the military service members. Michael Sweda delivers with haunting and stunning poetry that recalls that of Whitman and extends Whitmans great poetic vision for a new time and millenniumour time, this time. For anyone who loves America or an American service member, Dialogues with Walt Whitman for the New American Millennium is a must read. Prepare to be swept away and awed with the poetry of Michael Sweda, who honors the tradition of Walt Whitman and who brings Whitman to a new, higher level, just as Whitman envisioned during his lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504957250

Michael Sweda

Michael Sweda is a novelist, poet, forensic psychologist, clinical psychologist, and educator. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. As a forensic psychologist, he has the distinction of having founded, directed, and developed for the US Army at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (subsequently the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) the first and still only postdoctoral training program in forensic psychology that is accredited by the American Psychological Association. Early in his career he was a psychology intern and forensic psychology resident at St. Elizabeths Hospital, the first federal mental health hospital, which was originally chartered to serve the citizens of the District of Columbia, soldiers of the US Army, and sailors of the US Navy. Dr. Sweda also has the distinction of working on a series of major cases involving vulnerable populations, out of which the FBI Innocent Images program was founded, after which the US National Sex Offender Public Website was named, and the case which initiated National Missing Children’s Day. He has been a resident of Camp Springs, MD, for twenty-five years and is in the process of moving to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, with his wife of thirty years, Mercedes. He is currently working on his second novel, Unlawful Command Influence.

Book preview

Explications

Preferment

"What a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. Without regarding the danger, however, young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war; and though they have scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur. These romantic hopes make the whole price of their blood."⁵

Adam Smith

Debt and Fulfillment

Here, I redeem and bestow all honor which a single citizen can bestow upon the brave soldiers who protect myself, my family, and my country. I advance them to the highest rank of office, that of citizen soldier, greater than that of jurists, statesmen and diplomats, yes, greater than that of the President, and certainly greater, more eternal, robust, and dedicated than any efforts or accolade ever to be received by this poet. Your blood, breath, hopes, and loves are our greatest gift and honor.

Michael G Sweda, Author

Canto: Eidolon’s Return

Omen and Prophecy

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,

They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,

White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,

The kneeling crowd fades with the light of torches.

Distant and dead resuscitate,

They show as the dial or move as hands of me, I am the clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment,

I am there again.

Again the long roll of the drummers,

Again the attacking cannon, mortars,

Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.⁶

From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

To The Great Poet

I humbly praise you for your inspiration,

Hope written in bold terms during an earlier American century and millennium,

Your voice resounding large against the sweep of valleys and profile of mountains,

Against the centuries to come you sang of yourself, and sang ballads of the Great Republic,

All its mysterious glories made manifest,

Through day and night,

Through cannon blast and peaceful season.

You did not fear death, and in death you have been made larger.

The Nation invokes your spirit again, and your once-wearied spirit -- Eidolon --

Dutifully shakes off its