Poems for Company - February 24th, 2025

“Running on Empathy”: Three authors display various degrees of empathy in their depictions of Abraham Lincoln.  Walt Whitman, prose passages from Specimen Days, and “O Captain! My Captain.”  Kathleen Flenniken, “To Ease My Mind,” from Famous (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006), and used with kind permission of the author.  Leigh Stein, “Lincoln, Abraham, Melancholy Of,” from What To Miss When (New York: Soft Skull, 2021), and used with kind permission of the author.  Some historical background information provided by Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (2005); David Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times (2020); Ron Chernow, Grant (2017).  The show’s theme music is...