There’s something fitting about spending a Friday of NaPoWriMo in the company of a poet who refused to color inside the lines. Today’s resource, the The Walt Whitman Archive, is a treasure trove of drafts, letters, and poems that remind us just how radical Walt Whitman truly was—not just in what he wrote, but in how he believed poetry should live and breathe in the world.
Whitman has always been one of my favorite poets, not because he is easy, but because he is expansive. He gives permission. He breaks form, then rebuilds it in his own image. He reminds me that poetry doesn’t have to ask for approval—it just has to be honest. When I first encountered O Captain! My Captain!, I understood it as an elegy, a mourning song for Abraham Lincoln. But the older I get, the more I see it as something else too: a meditation on leadership, influence, and the quiet devastation of losing someone who showed you how to see the world.
That idea—of someone who changes the way you see—brings me to today’s prompt.
We’re asked to respond to a poem we love, much like Sergio Raimondi does in “Today Matsuo Bashō Cooks,” itself a playful and thoughtful engagement with Matsuo Bashō. That layering of voices, that conversation across time, is one of the things I love most about poetry. No poem stands alone; they echo, argue, respond.
For me, responding to Whitman meant reimagining the “Captain.” Not as a fallen leader of a nation, but as a guide within the classroom—a professor who challenges, disrupts, and ultimately awakens something deeper. I couldn’t help but think of the energy of Dead Poets Society, and specifically the influence of John Keating—that kind of teacher who doesn’t just instruct, but transforms.
I’ve been lucky enough to encounter professors like that. The kind who don’t just hand you knowledge, but demand you wrestle with it. The kind who make you stand up, look again, and find your own voice in a world that often prefers silence. This poem is for them.
It’s my way of answering Whitman—not with grief alone, but with gratitude. Not with an ending, but with continuation.
O Captain, My Professor
O Captain, my Professor, your chalk still haunts the air,
The board erased but echoes of your voice remain there—
Not carved in desks or syllabi bound tight in thread,
But in the quiet courage blooming in what you said.
O Captain, my Professor, we sat in rigid rows,
Counting grades like lifelines, measuring what we chose,
Until you cracked the windows—let the wild wind in,
And taught us ink could bleed, and still be worth the sin.
The bell would toll its warning, the halls would call us back,
But you stood firm at center, resisting every track—
“Stand up,” you said, “and see it from another view,”
And suddenly the world was wider than we knew.
O Captain, my Professor, you never claimed the helm,
Yet steered us through the silence of a smaller realm;
You whispered, “Make your verse,” though fear was close behind,
And lit a quiet rebellion in each restless mind.
The lesson plans lay scattered—unfollowed, undefined,
You traded them for questions we were scared to find;
Not answers, no—but something far more rare than that:
A voice that dared to rise where once we only sat.
O Captain, my Professor, though semesters fade away,
Your ghost still walks beside me in the words I say;
And when I doubt the worth of what I dare to write,
I hear you in the margins—keep the fire alight.
Here, Captain, dear Professor—this page, this breath, this line—
The timid hand you steadied now dares to define;
Not by grades or endings, nor where the journey ends—
But by the quiet bravery of beginning again.
Poetry, at its core, is a conversation—across time, across voices, across experience. Today, I answered Whitman. Tomorrow, maybe someone answers us.
If you want to explore more voices answering today’s prompt. Step beyond this page and into the wider current of #NaPoWriMo—where each voice bends the world in its own way. You can find them here: https://napowrimo.net/
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This is a lovely ode to good teachers. I’ve had quite a few, who made me fall in love with Math, History and English. I liked your thoughts on today’s prompt, too.
Thank you so very much. I have had some great teachers as well. Some of them still inspire me today, and are the reason I became an author.