Avid readers and lovers of poetry alike are coming together at Bookstore1 Sarasota tomorrow, Friday, May 31, at noon to celebrate the 200th birthday of American poet Walt Whitman and his seminal work Leaves of Grass, published in 1855. The bookstore's staff will read the entirety of Leaves of Grass aloud all day long, and customers can even jump in at various points throughout the day if they want to read any of the anthology's poems aloud themselves.

Although Whitman moved on to other projects after self-publishing Leaves of Grass, it remained a work he always returned to. There are dozens of published versions with as few as twelve poems to as many as four hundred poems in them. But considering BookStore1's event won't end until 6 p.m., we're confident Bookstore1 plans to get to many of them.

More information on signing up to read a section can be found by emailing [email protected].