Misinterpretation

When “Calamus” first appeared in the section of “Leaves of Grass” in the third edition in 1860, there were some controversy during that time about homosexual, or, as Gay Wilson Allen says “homoerotic”. However, the twentieth century thinks that Whitman was celebrating “manly love” and that each poem if just a direct “confession”, according to Russell A. Hunt in “Whitman’s Poetics and the Unity of ‘Calamus’”. Hunt also thinks that “Calamus” has a deeper meaning then just Whitman’s homoerotic tendencies, “consideration of the section can restrict itself to the implications of the clearly homoerotic passages only by ignoring much that is of real importance in determining how those passages are to be understood” (Hunt, 483).

Hunt introduces a theme in “For You O Democracy” is about the social values of “the reader-poet love-relation” (Hunt, 490). Other democratic poems that we have read are “I Hear It Was Charged Against Me” and “I Dreamed in a Dream.” These poems were frequently thought as “Whitman’s way of rationalizing and sublimating his homosexual urges” (Hunt, 490). The interpretations made from these poems are that the stronger the urge, the stronger the society will be.

Even though poems like “We Two Boys Together Clinging” is expressing companionship, because it is placed in the “Calamus,” it is frequently misread. Although there is much homosexual imagery placed in “Calamus,” Hunt thinks that it “represents one of the ways in which Walt Whitman artistically transcended his personality” (Hunt, 494).

It is easy to interpret the “Calamus” as a homosexual poem because of way it written. Many readers would jump to the conclusion it is a poem about homosexuals. Like in “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” it starts of “We two boys together clinging…” sound more than just a hug. The in “When I Heard at the Close of the Day”, “for the one I live most lay sleeping by me infer the came cover in the cool night, In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined towards me, and his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy.” It can easily be read as Whitman was with another male figure. There are many instances like this in the “Calamus” making this section of “Leaves of Grass” to be thought as his homosexual interest.

Hunt, A., Russell. “Whitman’s Poetics and the Unity of ‘Calamus’”

Whitman, Walt. “Leaves of Grass: First and ‘Dead-Bed’ Editions”