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Works of Walt Whitman: Calamus

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From: Monarch Notes
Date: 19630101
Author:Whitman, Walt

Whitman, Walt
Monarch Notes
01-01-1963
Calamus

Background.

The name Calamus appeared at the head of a group of forty-five poems in
the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. They were poems that expressed
"cohesiveness," as Whitman called it: the strong love of one man for another,
a counterbalancing emotion to the "amativeness," or love between male and
female, in the Children of Adam. This expression of male, or homosexual, love
is made with abundant tenderness and calmness rather than with the stormy
passion and boastfulness of the Children of Adam. While both groups can be
recognized as sex poems, ...

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