National Poetry Month: I Sing the Body Electric A Portrait of Walt Whitman in Words and Music By Wordstage

Letters, diaries and revolutionary poems set to live violin music paint an intimate portrait of America’s most influential poet. The period musical selections serve to conjure the mood of a great, emerging nation careening into civil war. Building on that charged atmosphere, director Tim Tavcar weaves carefully chosen snatches of the poet’s writings into a compelling biography. In an age marked by progress and hypocrisy, slavery and abolition, booming opportunity and silent homophobia, Walt Whitman drew upon his endless reserves of compassion to forge a poetic voice that spoke for the fledgling nation. It shouldn’t be possible to condense all of the passions and circumstances that made a man like Whitman into a single, one-hour presentation—and it isn’t—but Wordstage does a masterful job of sketching out a framework for new appreciation.