Poetry: Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand: Walt Whitman

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I am selecting poems from the Poetry Foundation's Queer Love Poems collection.

Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?


The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.


Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.


Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.

But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.

Comments

[ancientreader]

What do you make of this poem? As many times as I've read it in my life, and as sensuously inviting as I find parts of it, there are passages that come close to infuriating me with their seeming arrogance -- that "follower" bit at the beginning, and then the last two lines which make me think, Ugh, Walt, enough with the playing hard to get.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Well, I like it enough to post it, but I definitely see the arrogance you're talking about but I suppose it doesn't irritate me the way it does you. I've read other parts of Leaves of Grass, but they haven't really resonated with me.

In thinking about posting poems for June, I read all 48 poems in the Poetry Foundation's Queer Love collection and by the end of it I was in abject despair because I only liked, maybe, 4 of them. One was this and the other was Wild Nights. And the other two were written 300 years ago.It was a bit awful because I started having, you know, that familiar and dangerous spiral about not being sophisticated enough or intelligent enough or SOMETHING enough to appreciate a body of art. But most of them are a kind of word vomit of 'I banged a dude after AA yesterday and it rained.' I don't know. There's the message and there's the craft and at least Whitman has craft. I think of him like Hemingway, rightly or wrongly, a dude with a place in the English language but probably someone I'd never want to spend any time with.

[ancientreader]

Oh my lord, I must go and check out that collection; I seriously doubt that your taste is the problem here -- or, anyway, the tastes of discerning persons may vary. I just today learned that a friend whose opinion I value couldn't get through Great Expectations, which is one of my favorite books ever, and I think you and I may be in the same camp as regards Whitman, few of whose poems move me in spite of his being a Grand Old Man of queer poetry etc. etc.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

the tastes of discerning persons may vary

I need to repeat this in my head until I believe it, that I can still be a discerning reader and not enjoy what readers I admire enjoy.

[ancientreader]

<3 If only I could persuade you with examples (that is, if you consider me a discerning reader). My best friend (who majored in classics and for many years ran the libraries of a major university system) and I have, in the forty years we've known each other, not agreed on even a dozen novels. My longtime psychiatrist, which I know doesn't sound like much but OMG did we have an affinity and I miss him to this day (he retired five years ago) used to throw up our hands in horror at each other's literary taste. Thank fuck Spouse and I like most of the same things, or the quarrels at bedtime would be even worse than they are already. ;^)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I will keep your examples in mind. I just have to say it to myself over and over until I believe it.

I'm a little bit better now than I was. I used to just agree regardless of what I actually thought and pretend I like something. To be whatever I thought the other person wanted me to be. Now I just feel bad that I don't like it, which doesn't sound like progress but I faked enthusiasm for so, so, so many things I could care less about, it was a bit ridiculous.