“To increase the comfort of the female creature, occasionally whisper upon her ear ‘This will be over soon’ or urge her to think deeply upon the wonders of childbirth that Jesus Christ shall bestow upon her should she be worthy and fulfill the duty of her womb in intercourse.”
Just realized the way I formatted this post looks like I quoted it from the article. This douchiness was all me. Horror should Walt Whitman get blamed for that. If you need any more old-timey sex tips let me know.
When Thoreau visited Whitman old Walt greeted him with an unmade bed and a full chamberpot in the middle of the floor. And he told Thoreau and his friends that he took cold water baths every day in winter and enjoyed riding on top of trams in the cold.
This all just really confirms my opinion of Whitman, held for over 20 years, that there went an epic douchecanoe, who could write prose that made douchecanoerry sound legitimate.
It’s been my understanding that if you go back a sufficient number of centuries, obesity in men was seen as a highly desirable quality as it signified health and status. But come to think of it, I’ve never actually established if there was much truth to that. (Old-timey ads for “ironized yeast” and the like intended to enable women to gain extra weight have featured prominently enough in articles in recent years, though.)
I have always loved Whitman’s prose, abhorred his poetry. THE WORST poet, ever. But as a writer of prose he’s unbeatable! From the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass (the one that’s sort-of readable):
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes… . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its proliflic and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Somehow I can tolerate the verbosity and maximalism in his prose, in his verse it always just seems like bad choices and bloviation. Plus, sentences like the one beginning with “Here the performance…” are just fun to read out loud, whereas the poems aren’t fun at all, unless they’re being thrown at something like the wall or the floor.
They could sell it at the Walt Whitman Rest Stop off the NJ Turnpike (this is for realz and not a photoshop). I find it deeply ironic that there is a Walt Whitman Rest Stop.
