Walt Whitman, "America's poet" and unarguably New York's greatest, finally gets his big celebration tonight at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Rip Van Winkle-lookin' mofo, who directly influenced Ralph Waldo Emerson and Allen Ginsberg, will be celebrated by artisans of all varieties at an event with the Whitmanesque title of "I Do Not Doubt I am Limitless: Walt Whitman's Brooklyn," starting at 5 p.m.

Rick Moody, the local author most famous for "The Ice Storm," will lead a band that will make an ill-advised attempt to set the old man's free-flowing poetry to music. "The only challenge is, it's freaking hard to set the lines because there's no meter," Moody told the Wall Street Journal.

Another participant found herself digging Whitman's work because, as many people are surprised to learn, it's mostly about gay sex and masturbation. Her interpretation of "City of Orgies" (as if the title doesn't already have you racing to Amazon for his one mammoth tome, "Leaves of Grass") goes like this: "'You'll be famous because I live in you, and you can pay me back by providing me with continuous lovers." Sounds like a great Thursday night to us.

By the way, in case you cared, our favorite Whitman line is the one from "I Sing the Body Electric" that goes: "...the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards." Yes, yes and yes.