The Calamity Of Calamus
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The Calamity of Calamus
Introduction
Walt Whitman is famed as the first American poet. His use of free style has been praised by many and seen as very American. Walt Whitmans career as a poet was criticized in two different ways. He is either seen as a genius for his style, or he is seen as repulsive because of his homosexuality and the way he expresses it in his poems. One of his most criticized works was his 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. The Calamus section in particular caused the most controversy because of its explicit nature. Calamus was seen as bold, as well as an insult to society.
Live Oak, with Moss = Calamus
Originally Walt Whitman wrote some of the poems in Calamus under the title of Live Oak, with Moss (Miller 130). He later revised and edited these poems due to their explicit content and his unwillingness to be that open. (Sex, Politics, and “Live Oak with Moss”).
Fredson Bowers is credited with discovering “Live Oak, with Moss”. He had found that Whitman had written a twelve poem sequence, which around early 1859 Whitman had copied into a notebook. Whitman had taken apart the notebook and altered the sequence of the poems. As it turned out, all the poems were revised and appeared out of order in the forty-five poem “Calamus” section of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. “Live Oak, with Moss” was about two men in love, their happy relationship, and the unfortunate aftermath. (Parker)
Another man credited with unearthing Whitmans original works was Department of the Interior Secretary James Harlan. In 1865 he found Whitmans copy of Leaves of Grass. Whitmans copy included sexual and “procreative” passages that were marked for deletion or transference into another addition. Harlan was disgusted when he came across this document and soon thereafter fired Whitman because of his “obscene poetry”. (Miller 32)
Calamus vs. Children of Adam
When the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass was published, it included “Calamus” as well as “Children of Adam”. The latter was the exact opposite of “Calamus” as it explored and centered on the male-female relationship. Following Children of Adam, Calamus focused on the male-male relationship. Whitman used a certain terminology called phrenology to distinguish the two sections; adhesiveness for manly love, and amativeness for man-woman love (Miller 26). Phrenology is a science of balance, of keeping all psychological faculties from developing to excess (Killingsworth). Killingsworth remarks that the balancing act of Whitmans personal life is reflected in the rhetorical balancing of these two sections of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. (Chase 116) Richard Chase argues that if the Children of Adam poems remain abstract, the Calamus group benefits from the characteristic power of Whitmans sensibility to dilate and retract between the personal and the universal, the human and the natural, the instinctive and the utopian.” One of Whitmans most well-known poems is I Sing the Body Electric. In this poem he openly praises men and women; however his focus is more on men. With lines like:
“The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good natured,
native
born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work, the coats and caps
thrown down,
the embrace of love and resistance, the upper-hold and under-hold,
the hair
rumpled over and blinding the eyes; the march of firemen in their own
costumes, the
play of masculine muscle through clean setting trowsers and waiststraps”
(Whitman 112)
“Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, the group of laborers
seated
at noon-time with their open dinner kettles, and their wives waiting”
(Whitman 112)
Another good sample of Whitmans “coming out” in his poetry is “Calamus 9”:
“Sullen and suffering hours! ( I am ashamed–but it is useless–I am what I am;)
Hours of my torment–I wonder if other men ever have the like, out of the like
feelings?
Is there even one other like me–distracted–his friend, his lover, lost to him?”
(Killingsworth)
It is obvious to the reader that Whitman is partial to men.
Pro-Whitman
At the time of publication, many people were not open to Whitmans apparent openness. They found his revealing poems to be perverted, wrong, and disgusting. However there were those who praised Whitman for his style and for his boldness. W.D. OConnor defended Whitman in The Good Gray Poet (1866) by comparing Whitman to Buddha and Christ and ranking his work with Homers and Shakespeares. John Burroughs defended Whitman with a book called Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (1867). He emphasized Whitmans innocence and protected his reputation (Miller 32). Emerson and Thoreau were accepting of Whitmans works, Thoreau even sought Whitman out to convey his respects in person (Miller 27); he found them “wonderfully like the Orientals” (Miller 153). Thoreau also claimed that on the whole, it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that I have preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching. (“Whitman and Transcendentalism”). James Kaplan thought Leaves of Grass contained “the most brilliant and original poetry yet written in the New World, at once the fulfillment of American literary romanticism and the beginnings of American literary modernism” (“Walt Whitman”). Guy Davenport even said “Whitman has been woven into Americans myth of themselves as their “greatest invention in literature” and as their “lyric voice” (“Walt Whitman”).
Later in society many people will come to praise Whitman for being so bold because society became more accepting of homosexuals.
Whitmans style and contributions to poetry have earned him the title of “the first real poet of American English” (“Walt Whitman”) He is credited with creating a language to express the spirit of American democracy and used that language to shape a vision of a new continent that still fires the American imagination. (“Walt Whitman”)
Anti-Whitman
The people of the nineteenth