Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
Walt Whitman was gay. That was one of the first things I heard when I picked up Leaves of Grass and began my study of Whitman. While it wasn’t readily apparent in all of his works, there were some large contenders to back up the assertion, namely his Calamus poems. After I read Calamus I finally understood all of the talk about Whitman’s sexuality because some definitely seemed homoerotic. However, upon further study, I began to change my mind. The more I read over Calamus the less I saw these poems as some big “coming out” for Whitman, and the more I saw in them a truer expression of non-sexualized love between men. In order to express the depth of same-sex love, Whitman uses images of intimacy as a way to underscore that he doesn’t otherwise have a unique language for the depth of love homosocial “comrades” experience.
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Location
B192 JFSB
Start Date
20-3-2015 1:45 PM
End Date
20-3-2015 3:00 PM
Included in
Calamus: Homoeroticism or Brotherly Love?
B192 JFSB
Walt Whitman was gay. That was one of the first things I heard when I picked up Leaves of Grass and began my study of Whitman. While it wasn’t readily apparent in all of his works, there were some large contenders to back up the assertion, namely his Calamus poems. After I read Calamus I finally understood all of the talk about Whitman’s sexuality because some definitely seemed homoerotic. However, upon further study, I began to change my mind. The more I read over Calamus the less I saw these poems as some big “coming out” for Whitman, and the more I saw in them a truer expression of non-sexualized love between men. In order to express the depth of same-sex love, Whitman uses images of intimacy as a way to underscore that he doesn’t otherwise have a unique language for the depth of love homosocial “comrades” experience.