Broadway Sights

I really enjoyed reading the selection, “Broadway Sights” from Specimen Days because it brought up memories for me about growing up in New York. Going to Poe's House on the Grand Concourse, visiting the Van Cortlandt Mansion, and the Trinity Church graveyard, among other places, were memorable experiences. It also made me look into the origins of theater on Broadway, the connections between Astor and the arts and his connection to Poe. I now have a great little piece of useless trivia: The lions (Leo Lenox and Leo Astor ) at the NY public library were named after Astor and James Lenox because they founded the library. It must have been incredible for Whitman to see Edgar Allen Poe, James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Dickens, among others (I am focusing on the writers) as a young journalist and writer. I started to think about the celebrities I have seen or met there: Tom Hanks, Bernadette Peters, and Carol Channing and what an influence that had on me as a theater person. This seemed like a straight-up journal entry from Whitman and I am not sure exactly how it connects with Leaves of Grass except for the fact that New York itself certainly had some influence on his work, but it definitely took me on a trip down memory lane, which is funny since he lived SO long before my time.