Sometimes, life feels like art.

Sometimes, life—which is usually messy and unresolved–achieves the formal perfection of art. I have a friend who at one point seemed trapped in a Greek tragedy. Bad things were happening to her, but it wasn’t just that bad things were happening to her; bad things happen to all of us. It was that those particular bad things seemed designed especially for her, to teach her a set of very specific lessons. It didn’t seem possible that ordinary circumstances could have arisen in a way that seemed to show so much…deliberation.

I’ve had moments when I felt like reaching for the transcendent power of art to express myself. I’m always writing, of course, and I express myself that way, with great gratification, but I remember that during the height of the Covid lockdown, I was walking down the middle of a deserted Lexington Avenue, which is a wide street usually packed with cars, bikes, and pedestrians. As I stood there, on that silent, empty street, I felt that I should lift my voice in song, to express what was in my heart, as I would have done if I’d been in a musical.

Twice, recently, I’ve felt this way, when I felt the urge to recite a poem to strangers. First, I was on a plane returning from Nashville, and I looked out the window to see New York City laid out beneath me, with its bridges, parks, skyscrapers, apartment buildings, boats, and my very favorite sight of all, the Statue of Liberty. How I love the Statue of Liberty! I wanted to call out to my fellow passengers, “Look out the window, there it is! Don’t miss it!” I wanted to stand in the aisle and proclaim my happiness to be home to New York City, to see such a beautiful view of what I loved so much.

Again, another day, as I walked around downtown Manhattan, I wanted to jump onto a bench and start to recite poetry, to share with strangers my love for New York City.

The minute I was home, I did pull out my copy of Walt Whitman’s poetry, so I could re-read the familiar words of his poem “Mannahatta,” written in 1860.

Here’s the part I was thinking of, that I felt like reciting in the airplane and on the sidewalk:

an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!

I’m grateful to Walt Whitman for helping put words to my love for New York City.