Join the Walt Whitman Initiative’s Karen Karbiener in conversation with poet and preservationist Brad Vogel as he dives into the complicated effort to preserve built, physical touchstones of Whitman’s time in New York City for the future. Vogel will share some of his own poetry as he explores what Whitman’s poetry has meant for him and his view of the world.

Brad Vogel is a poet, attorney, and historic preservationist who captains the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club. He is the author of the poetry collection Broad Meadow Bird: 15 Years of Poetry and a finalist for the 2020 Erskine J. Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in outlets like Smartish Pace, Fresh Water Review, and Solitary Plover, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times. Vogel brings poetry to life in original, unorthodox events like Whitman After Dark (after dark walkabout reading of The Sleepers), the annual Dawn Reading in canoes for the Brooklyn Book Festival (including Whitman’s entire Sea-Drift cluster), and NYC Poets Afloat (a microresidency and reading series aboard vessels around NY Harbor). He serves as Executive Director of the New York Preservation Archive Project, and previously served as the Ed Majkrzak Fellow with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in New Orleans

RAL Host Karen Karbiener, president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, is a Whitman scholar and teaches at New York University. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she was the curator of “Whitman and the Promise of America” (South Street Seaport Museum, NY, July – December 2005), “Poet of the Body: New York’s Walt Whitman” (with Susan Tane; Grolier Club, NY, May – July 2019), and most recently, “Robust American Love: Avid Visions by Walt Whitman and John Ransom Phillips” (BlackBook Presents, Brooklyn, August – September 2019).