Ode to Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1930

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Celebrating Homoeroticism

A central theme in “Ode to Walt Whitman” is celebrating male-male sensuality and sexuality, or homoeroticism. Some lines and phrases are explicitly sexual, while other erotic moments come from dual or metaphoric meanings. Body parts are erotically described, including “thighs” (Line 32), “navels” (Line 65), and “tongue” (Line 129). Even more specific to male-male sexuality, the penis is explicitly discussed, from the “rose of circumcision” (Line 13) to “tumescent flesh” (Line 102). In addition to celebrating the human male sex organ, Lorca includes animal sex organs, such as a bird “with its sex pierced” (Line 36). These descriptions give the male body a connection with nature and homosexuality is characterized as natural.

Some imagery can be read as sexual through the use of double entendre, or double meanings. Gay men are described as “flesh for the whip, / the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers” (Lines 58-59). This recalls the animal imagery of the bird: On the surface, this passage can evoke a circus performer and a lion. However, whips and boots are part of BDSM practices that exist in some communities. This use of double meanings also applies to the tools that miners use: “oil, leather” (Line 3). The tools listed as parts of manual labor are also elements of fetish-laden sex.

However, like Whitman, Lorca seems to prefer sexuality without props. The naked and unadorned (as well as uncut) male body is beloved by both poets. A “nude as blue as the sky” (Line 89) characterizes nudity as pastoral, or romantic. It creates a positive image of men gazing at other men; it suggests the homoerotic gaze is as natural as gazing at the sky. Furthermore, this sexuality contains a love language. Whitman, a “virile beauty” (Line 40), desires a man to “place in [his] breast / the small ache of an ignorant leopard” (Lines 43-44). Not only do men cause physical arousal (tumescence), but they also arouse the heart with feelings of love.

Whitman’s Rural Romanticism and Lorca’s Urban Duende

While both Whitman and Lorca are lovers of male bodies, Lorca notes the absence of duende in Whitman’s romantic style of poetry. Lorca highlights Whitman’s lack of interest in labor conditions and violence against homosexual men, which comprises another poetic theme. Lorca examines how industrialization has impacted America and specifically, American homosexual men. According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:

Whitman has greatly influenced homosexual poetry as well. He is the subject of [“Ode to Walt Whitman” by Lorca], a critique of Americanization and commercialization and its negative effects on homosexual identity. (542)

Whitman’s ideal of male-male love focuses on the rural, or pastoral. Lorca describes Whitman as touched by—or part of—nature in phrases such as “corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon” (Line 31). The celestial imagery associated with Whitman also includes the “sun” (Line 65) and in Whitman’s desire to be a “cloud” (Line 17). This romantic imagery is far above the earth and earthly labor. Lorca, in contrast, identifies those who have time for lounging by the riverside, or “those who don’t work” (Line 23), as the dead. Among the American working class—especially the non-white members of this class—participating in industry is necessary for survival. Whitman does not look for the corpses “beneath the city clocks” (Line 83), but grappling with death and working conditions is part of Lorca’s poetic duende.

Lorca ends the poem with the desire for upper class white men to be confronted with the effects of colonial violence related to food production and distribution. He wants a “black child to inform the gold-craving whites / that the kingdom of grain has arrived” (Lines 136-37). This image evokes people who have been enslaved or subjected to poor working conditions speaking out about their treatment. While America loves Whitman, especially upper-class white America, Lorca sees how America does not care for the lower class who have been the most profoundly affected by industrialization. Whitman helps America imagine idyllic fields, rather than the “truths of wheat” (Line 27). Lorca’s ode hopes to infuse the imaginary with duende.

Condemning Homophobic Violence

A third theme in “Ode to Walt Whitman” is condemnation of people who enact violence against homosexual men. Lorca sees a world where the moon that once caressed Whitman’s “corduroy shoulders” (Line 31) is transformed: Wounded gay men are “on terraces / while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror” (Line 71-72). This transformation of celestial imagery brings light to urban tragedy that Whitman overlooked. The lives lost to homophobic violence profoundly affected Lorca. He opposes a world where “life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred” (Line 87). This asserts that violent homophobes are ignoble, evil, and cursed.

Lorca repeatedly defines who he opposes and who he does not oppose. He is “Always against you, who give boys / drops of foul death with bitter poison” (Lines 105-06). Here, Lorca singles out the people who murder gay men with poison. However, he discusses different kinds of violence, repeating the word “against” in Lines 101, 105, and 107. Lorca stands against the “murderers” (Line 116) who perpetuate this violence. On the other hand, Lorca sides with the men “who love other men” (Line 100), as well as the “confused” (Line 124), who can be referred to as questioning (sometimes the “Q” in the acronym LGBTQ). He does not oppose any “love that bestows crowns of joy” (Line 104), whether heterosexual or homosexual.