Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! cont’d
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung -- for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Sweaty Toothed Madman
Song of Myself
52
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the
world.
Whitman nude?
Song of Myself
45
O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity!
O manhood, balanced, florid and full.
My lovers suffocate me,
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,
Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and
chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows
after and out of itself,
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
Song of Myself cont’d
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of
the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward and forever outward.
My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
not avail the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
Song of Myself cont’d
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do
not hazard the span or make it impatient,
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
Calamus poem
WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,
Armed and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the
turf of the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
Calamus symbolism
Whitman's symbol for gay love is the calamus plant, calamus
acornus, colloquially called the “sweet-flag” which he refers to as
“the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.” It is a
hardy perennial that grows by ponds in the mid-eastern States, and has
three-foot high tufts, long pointed leaves, yellow-green spikes, and
huge sprawling rhizomes (tubers or “roots”) that closely resemble
penises in various stages of tumescence. It is named after the river
god Calamus who grieved for the death by drowning of his boy lover
Carpus. – Rictor Norton
Whitman with Doyle
Sexuality in Whitman
Themes of sex and sexuality have dominated Leaves of Grass from
the very beginning and have shaped the course of the book's
reception. The first edition in 1855 contained what were to be called
“Song of Myself,” “The Sleepers,” and “I Sing the Body Electric,”
which are ‘about’ sexuality (though of course not exclusively)
throughout. From the very beginning, Whitman wove together
themes of ‘manly love’ and ‘sexual love,’ with great emphasis on
intensely passionate attraction and interaction, as well as bodily
contact (touch, embrace) in both. Simultaneously in sounding these
themes, he equated the body with the soul, and defined sexual
experience as essentially spiritual experience. He very early adopted
two phrenological terms to discriminate between the two
relationships: “amativeness” for man-woman love and
“adhesiveness” for “manly love.” – James E. Miller, Jr.
Whitman in a sea of poems
Reception of Whitman
Betsy Erkkila relates the case of a public service announcement dealing with
Whitman's sexual orientation (in an attempt to offer support to lesbian and gay
teenagers) that was refused by all six Philadelphia television stations, in two cases
on the advice of the director of the Walt Whitman Poetry Center, who feared that
the announcement would be “detrimental” to the Center's educational efforts.
Leaves of Grass still appears on the usual lists of banned books, and anyone who has
taught Whitman knows that both of the objections current in 1855 remain firmly
entrenched: his poems are not really poems, and whatever they are, they are
“dirty.” – Jason Paul Mitchell
An American Queer?
Whitman is America's greatest embarrassment, because if what he
says about democracy is true, then the American ideal of
universal equality is inherently homosexual, and homosexual
love is the physiological basis of democracy. Whitman is a much
more subversive and radical poet than even Jean Genet, and
American school children for the past half-century have been
carefully protected from exposure to America's greatest poet. Rictor Norton