The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 75. Gregory Woods "Refuting Lies About Whitman’s Orientation"

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Refuting Lies About Whitman’s Orientation

Edward Carpenter told Symonds he should never have addressed the issue to Whitman point-blank. He said Whitman’s denial [of his queerness] was a lie, clearly intended to shake the obstinate Symonds off, once and for all. Oscar Wilde came back from America [in the 1880s] and told the poet George Ives that Whitman made no secret of his [orientation]. “The kiss of Walt Whitman,” he said, “is still on my lips.” I dare say one must choose between the evidence of the two men who spent copious amounts of time with Whitman face to face, and that which he put in writing [as exploitation] for a correspondent on the other side of the Atlantic.

—Gregory Woods,

1998