Annotations, Ch 132
Poem from Leaves of Grass, Calamus
The text is available online here: bartleby (dot) com/142/index1 (dot) html
Walt Whitman was homosexual or bisexual. It shows in Leaves. People dispute this, but I really can’t see how you could read anything from Calamus and still claim that he wasn’t interested in men.
I suggest having an anatomy book open on the side while reading the sex scenes. Have fun finding the L4 vertebra and the inguinal ligament, among other things. Also, if you read very carefully, this scene has more sex than the words would have you believe (where do the abdominal muscles terminate?). Yes, despite the fact that they only get half naked.