Summer Reading: Two Transcendent Poems About Public Transportation

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Natedimeo, History, Publicradio, Radiotopia

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate.

While Nate takes a little summer break, he reads you two poems.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMaio, and it's the end of the summer.
0:04.7	And sometimes at the end of the summer, when I take a little time off, I like to leave you
0:10.5	with something to listen to, and I read something from American literature. And today I have
0:17.6	two poems, each transcendent stories of a particular kind of American
0:25.2	transcendence that both take place on public transportation.
0:29.8	This is Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman.
0:32.7	Flood tide below me, I see you face to face.
0:36.2	Clouds of the West, sun there a half an hour high, I see you also
0:39.9	face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me.
0:45.8	On the ferry boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious
0:50.7	to me than you suppose. And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence
0:55.0	are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose.
1:00.0	The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
1:05.0	the simple, compact, well-joined scheme, myself disintegrated,
1:09.0	every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme. The similitudes
1:12.9	of the past and those of the future. The glory strung like beads on my smallest sides and hearings,
1:18.8	on the walk in the street and the passage over the river. The current rushing so swiftly and
1:24.4	swimming with me far away, the others there are to follow me, the ties between me
1:29.0	and them, the certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others. Others will enter
1:36.0	the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore. Others will watch the run of the floodtide.
1:41.6	Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east. Others will see the shipping of Manhattan, north and west, the heights of
1:45.2	Brooklyn to the south and east. Others will see the islands large and small. Fifty years hence,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate DiMeo, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nate DiMeo and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.