Walt Whitman
Listen to the singer's take on the classic, "Song of Myself"
He was the ultimate provocateur. Walt Whitman lived during the Victorian era, but he refused to abide by the prudish dictates of the time. His first collection of poems, Leaves of Grass (published in 1855 and continuously revised by Whitman throughout his life), immediately established that sex and sexuality were going to be front and center in his work. In an anonymous review of Leaves secretly written by Whitman himself, the poet declared, “The body, he teaches, is beautiful. Sex is also beautiful…. Sex will not be put aside; it is a great ordination of the universe. He works the muscle of the male and the teeming fibre of the female throughout his writings, as wholesome realities, impure only by deliberate intention and effort.”
Naturally, the lustiness of Whitman’s work created an uproar—one reviewer called his work “a mass of stupid filth”; a Boston district attorney categorized it as “obscene literature”; and even famed poet Ralph Waldo Emerson begged Whitman to remove the offending material from his collection. Thankfully, Whitman refused.
