2 posts tagged “walt whitman”
Coincidentally with the anniversary of the Stonewall riots that began the modern gay liberation movement, I've been reading and thinking about the potentials of same-sex love.
Poet Walt Whitman, according to his contemporary Edward Carpenter, said that "the best part of comrade love was that there was no limit to the number of comrades one could have -- whereas the very fact of engendering children made the man-woman relationship more singular" (Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love, p. 56).
Not that heterosexual men haven't hankered after the same plurality. This is Larry David playing "himself" in his TV comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, talking to a friend who has recently reunited with his wife.
Larry: I was saying to my wife, you should let me date. It will bring us that much closer. I'll come home, you'll say 'How did the date go?' I'll say, 'Oh, I couldn't stand her, she did this and that...' You know, the way you talk to a guy about it. We'd have a good laugh, have sex and have a good time.
Friend: You and your wife have sex?
L: Yeah, after I told her about my date.
F: But what if you ended up getting laid from the date?
L: Then I'd tell her about that, too. 'We went back to her place, we had sex and I had to make up an excuse to leave, and whatever...'
F: That's beautiful. I like that.
L: Perfect world.
(Season 3; Episode 4)
Perfect world indeed!
--Julian
After David posted about the delight of hearing the word rumbustious on a podcast, I found it myself within days. In Sheila Rowbotham's biography of Edward Carpenter, we meet the older Walt Whitman.
By 1877 he had buried his earlier self, the rumbustious Brooklyner who hung out with tough, street-wise New York 'b'hoys', recasting himself as a sagacious 'good grey poet' and democratic patriarch.
And yesterday I read a review of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which Doug Ireland says recreates "those heady, joyously rambunctious" early days of the movement.
Now all I need is a robustious.
I'm enjoying Carpenter very much. Rowbotham tells us that when his prose poem Towards Democracy first appeared with lines like
I look upon him who makes all things.
I sit at his feet in silence as he lights his pipe, and feel the careless resting of his fingers upon my neck.
I see the fire leaping in the grate; I see the nodding of grasses..."
one wag called it "Whitman and water."
--Julian
