Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and Other Poems [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1969

Read by Ed Begley


Side One | Listen

  1. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
  2. Song of Myself, section 26
  3. I Sing the Body Electric, section 3 (from Children of Adam)
  4. No Labor-Saving Machine (from Calamus)
  5. By Blue Ontario’s Shore, section 17

Side Two | Listen

  1. Pioneers! O Pioneers! (from Birds of Passage)
  2. A Song of the Rolling Earth, sections 1-4
  3. The World Below the Brine (from Sea-Drift)
  4. After the Sea-Ship (from Sea-Drift)
  5. A Clear Midnight (from From Noon to Starry Night)
  6. Now Finale to the Shore (from Songs of Parting)

From the MSR Archives

The Body Electric-2: The Erotic Words of Walt Whitman [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1973

Read by Jesse Pearson

Music by Rod McKuen


Side One | Listen

  1. Are You That New Person? (1:43)
  2. The Man I Love Avows His Sex (2:41)
  3. To a Passing Stranger (2:05)
  4. Electric Fires Within Me (1:23)
  5. My Lover Suffocates Me (1:06)
  6. Adam, Early in the Morning (1:09)
  7. Who You Are Is Not Important (2:23)

Side Two | Listen

  1. Forbidden Voices (2:23)
  2. As I Lay with My Head on Your Lap (2:16)
  3. The Stallion (:51)
  4. We Two Boys Together (1:53)
  5. Final Sunsets, No More Seas (2:44)
  6. 28 Young Men (1:50)

From the MSR Archives

The Body Electric [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1973

Read by Jesse Pearson

Music by Rod McKuen


Side One | Listen

  1. I Sing the Body Electric (1:20)
  2. The Love of the Body (2:00)
  3. Naked Swimmers and Horsemen (2:40)
  4. I Knew a Man (3:04)
  5. It Is Enough To Touch Anyone (1:15)
  6. Theme from The Body Electric (2:27)
  7. This Is the Female Form (3:10)

Side Two | Listen

  1. The Full Spread Pride of Man (1:50)
  2. The Sacred Ones (1:25)
  3. A Man’s Body at Auction (3:42)
  4. Mother of Mothers (2:05)
  5. Oh, My Body! (9:39)
  6. Theme from The Body Electric (3:02)
  7. Are you the new person drawn toward me?

From the MSR Archives

Treasury of Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1966

Read by Alexander Scourby


Volume I

Side One | Listen

1. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
2. From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

Side Two | Listen

1. I Sing the Body Electric
2. A Woman Waits for Me

Volume II

Side One | Listen

1. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
2. O Captain! My Captain!
3. Hush’d Be the Camps Today
4. This Dust Was Once the Man
5. I Hear America Singing

Side Two | Listen

1. The Sleepers
2. The Wound-Dresser
3. Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
4. I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing
5. I Hear It Was Charged Against Me


From the MSR Archives

Leaves of Grass [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1961

Read by Dan O’Herlihy


Side One | Listen
Song of Myself—Part 1

Side Two | Listen
Song of Myself—Part 2

Side Three | Listen
Song of Myself—Part 3

Side Four | Listen
Song of Myself—Part 4; Once I Pass’d through a Populous City

Side Five | Listen
In Paths Untrodden; When I Heard at the Close of the Day

Side Six | Listen
Song of the Open Road; Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Side Seven | Listen
Pioneers! O Pioneers!; Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

Side Eight | Listen
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d; So Long!


From the MSR Archives

Eyewitness to the Civil War [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1969

Read by Ed Begley


Side One | Listen

  1. From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
  2. Opening of the Secession War
  3. Eighteen Sixty-One
  4. Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
  5. Contemptuous Feeling
  6. Beat! Beat! Drums!
  7. Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
  8. Long, Too Long America
  9. An Army Corps on the March
  10. The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
  11. Sources of Character—Results—1860
  12. Bivouac on a Mountain Side
  13. After First Fredericksburg
  14. Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

Side Two | Listen

  1. Back to Washington
  2. Hospital Scenes and Persons
  3. Not Youth Pertains to Me
  4. The White House by Moonlight
  5. A Night Battle, Over a Week Since
  6. A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
  7. Ambulance Processions
  8. O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
  9. Bad Wounds—The Young
  10. Cavalry Crossing a Ford
  11. A Cavalry Camp
  12. By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame

Side Three | Listen

  1. Abraham Lincoln
  2. A Silent Night Ramble
  3. Summer of 1864
  4. A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and The Road Unknown
  5. Hospital Scenes-Incidents
  6. The Inauguration
  7. A Yankee Antique
  8. Wounds and Diseases
  9. Death of President Lincoln
  10. Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day
  11. O Captain! My Captain

Side Four | Listen

  1. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
  2. This Dust Was Once the Man
  3. Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation—Its Sudden Stoppage
  4. Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
  5. Two Brothers, One South, One North
  6. Three Years Summ’d Up
  7. Race of Veterans
  8. World Take Good Notice
  9. Lo, Victress on the Peaks
  10. The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
  11. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
  12. Old War-Dreams

From the MSR Archives

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass I & II [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1959, 1964

Read by Ed Begley


Volume One:

Side One | Listen

  1. I Hear America Singing
  2. From Faces: The old face of the mother of many children (5)
  3. To a Locomotive in Winter
  4. A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest
  5. From The Sleepers: The sleepers are very beautiful (8)
  6. From Song of Myself
    • I celebrate myself (1)
    • A Child said What is the grass? (6)
    • Who goes there? (20)
    • I think I could turn and live with animals (32)
    • The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me (52)

Side Two | Listen

  1. When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
  2. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
  3. Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
  4. Good-Bye My Fancy!

Volume Two:

Side One | Listen

  1. Song of the Open Road

Side Two | Listen

  1. Song of Myself: Twenty-Eight young men (11)
  2. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
  3. O Captain! My Captain!

From the MSR Archives

From ‘Leaves of Grass’ by Walt Whitman [Album]

James SchminckeUncategorized

Released 1956

Read by David Allen


Side One | Listen

  1. One’s Self I Sing; I Hear America Singing; Poets To Come
  2. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
  3. Song of Myself (excerpts)
  4. When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

Side Two | Listen

  1. Hushed Be the Camps Today
  2. Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
  3. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

From the MSR Archives