Walt Whitman — patriotic poet, gay iconoclast, shrewd marketing ploy, or all three?

[Medievalist]

@boingboing

All this advertising attention to Whitman is curious since, in general, poets don’t make good marketing tools. The Whitman name is particularly problematic. While some people are inspired by his steadfast support of the Union cause during the Civil War, imperiling his own health to work as a nurse in a Washington, D.C., Army hospital, others see him as a very early champion of gay identity, as well as a hell of an erotic writer. Being patriotic and gay are obviously not incompatible, but the latter often gives those who would make money off the former pause.

I just want to say that’s a nicely turned paragraph, there. Perhaps Whitman would approve!