The Postal Service has released a video with highlights from the recent Walt Whitman stamp dedication ceremony.
The stamp, the 32nd entry in the Literary Arts series, features a portrait of the beloved poet based on an 1869 photograph. In the background, a hermit thrush sits on a lilac bush’s branch.
“We think the stamp is beautiful. I personally love the lilac tone which, of course, evokes his famous poem ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,’” Cynthia Shore, executive director of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, says in the video.
Other highlights include comments from Erik Kulleseid, a New York state parks commissioner, and Darrel Blaine Ford, a Walt Whitman impersonator.