I Sing the Body Electric
The Twilight Zone

Poetasters and scholiasters dismiss Whitman, Borges translated him and wrote some lines in his honor. Bradbury has a sense of Whitman in his element, and presents a metaphorical view of him partly arranged for the understanding of children such as the first mentioned, but mainly geared to placing the poet very accurately in his true position, for a portrait.

The showroom of Facsimile, Ltd. with its assortment of eyes and ears and hair has a Dalian flavor akin to the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Two directors were required to bring out all the nuances of very sharp performances, and “I Sing the Body Electric” is worthy of its subject.

“That’s my job, to live forever!”, is the robot’s comment.

Bradbury is thinking of Shakespeare when he writes of a three-hundred-year wait for “life”.