June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month

The letter ‘G’ in the acronym LGBTQ+ stands for gay. Gay has several meanings, one usage of which is for happy or merry times. The word as used in this acronym is now specifically used to refer to homosexual males. Both American poets mentioned here were open about and did not hide their sexual preferences.

Walt Whitman (b. 05/31/1819 – d. 03/26/1892) from Long Island, NY, is the father of Free Verse in American poetry. He helped and nursed wounded Civil War soldiers in a hospital in Washington, D.C. during and after the war. He admired President Abraham Lincoln and I have included part of a poem he wrote after Lincoln’s assassination here. He could not get his now famous book of poems Leaves of Grass published for years because of homoeroticism in it so he published several editions on his own.

Allan Ginsberg (b.1926 – d.1997) was one of the leaders of the Beat Generation of poets, which preceded and influenced the Hippies or Love Generation of the 1960s. I heard him read poems at my college, C.W. Post, L.I.U., in 1968 with Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert aka Baba Ram Dass discussing LSD.

An early poem in 1956, Kaddish, is a long poem of mourning on the death of his mother, Naomi. Kaddish is a Hebrew prayer in Aramaic, praising God in the language Jesus spoke. His poem includes praise of homosexuality. Ginsberg was against the war in Vietnam. His poetry often contains vulgarities and obscenities.

With both poems I have offered only sections due to their length, in hopes readers will look them up to read them in their entirety.

O Captain! My Captain!

This poem is an elegy/ dirge in three octets written for President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 by Walt Whitman after Lincoln was assassinated in Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Following is the middle octet of the poem:

O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells,

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.”

AMERICA

A free verse Beat poem written by Alan Ginsberg in 1956. There are more than 90 lines in the poem. I have selected lines that are relevant to today’s headlines from this poem written 64 years ago:

(the beginning of the poem)

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

I can’t stand my own mind.

America when will we end the human war?

Go f… yourself with your atom bomb.

I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem

till I’m in my right mind.”

(The rest of the poem is filled with anger, comments about politics, Communism, capitalism, labor unions. It exposes discrimination against Black Americans and American Indians, and some reference to marijuana use. Ginsberg is upset with what he sees in American history.)

America you don’t really want to go to war.

America it’s them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad.”

(He ends the poem on an upbeat note and alludes to his homosexuality. Here are the last lines at the end of the poem) 

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.

America is this correct?

I’d better get right down to the job.

It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories,

I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.