WEBVTT

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Thanks, Tyler.

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There's a long tradition
of visual artists,

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as well as performing
artists, using

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the great works of literature
as the basis for their own art.

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Renaissance painter Titian,
William Blake, Salvador Dali,

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the sculptor Rodin, Tchaikovsky,
Kate Bush, Iron Maiden,

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Steven Spielberg, Baz Luhrmann,
and underground comics legend

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Robert Crumb, are
a few people who

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have taken a literary
classic and re-envisioned it

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through their own art.

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With his amazing new
book, Whitman Illuminated,

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Allen Crawford has
joined these ranks

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with a highly graphic
21st century style.

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His approach hearkens back to
the illuminated manuscripts

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made by monks in the Middle
Ages, but with bold new twists.

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Allen and his wife Susan
run an art and design studio

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in New Jersey.

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Among other things, they
created illustrations

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of 400 species of ocean life.

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These illustrations are
on permanent display

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at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York.

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Now, Allen apparently
realized that he

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had a taste for epic projects,
because he turns his attention

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to "Song of Myself," Walt
Whitman's masterpiece,

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a sprawling, endlessly complex
hymn to life and existence.

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Working on a grand
scale, Allen elaborately

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hand-lettered the entire
thing and he wove hundreds

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of illustrations into the mix.

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I'm not aware of any
other artists doing

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this sort of dense,
winding lettering merged

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with illustrations.

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The reader reviews on
Amazon and Goodreads,

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two forums with
very tough crowds,

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are overwhelmingly
positive, even glowing.

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The New York Times described the
book as zestful, which I love.

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Allen is showing us this
endlessly dissected poem

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in a new light, one that
forcefully demonstrates

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it's zestful thundering glory.

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So now, please welcome,
Allen Crawford.

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[APPLAUSE]