Calamus (poems) - "Calamus" Sequence

"Calamus" Sequence

In the 1860 third edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman included the twelve "Live Oak" poems along with others to form a sequence of 45 untitled numbered poems. This sequence as written celebrates many aspects of "comradeship" or "adhesive love," Whitman's term, borrowed from phrenology to describe male same-sex attraction. This attraction is presented in its political, spiritual, metaphysical, and personal phases—Whitman offering it as the backbone of future nations, the root of religious sentiments, the solution to the big questions of life, and as a source of personal anguish and joy.

The 1860 edition contains three poems that Whitman would later edit out of the sequence, including the very personal Calamus 8, "Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me," and Calamus 9, "Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted." Whitman's constant editing of his works meant that many of the other poems would change and shift throughout the editions of his life. By the 1881–82 edition, the poems had been reduced to 39. Critics have generally noted that Whitman's edits tended to reduce some of his most personal and specific disclosures, possibly as an attempt to make the sequence more attractive to its wider audience.