an democracy in Song of Myself to accurately read Whitman’s struggle with the whole of Leaves of Grass. The study of Whitman’s homosexuality in context of the tradition of American poetry is, as according to Martin, an “indication of the ways in which gay writers...have sought to explore the consequences of their homosexuality and to express them in their creative work”(The Continuing Presence, xv). Martin’s mission statement clearly involves this exploration and goes on to say that Whitman “so clearly defined his poetic mission as a consequence of his homosexuality”(xvi). But to take this a little further, Whitman’s Song of Myself is more a call for democracy not so much as in consequence of Whitman’s homosexuality, but in spite of this homosexuality that is wrestled with in the Calamus section. In her chapter, "Loving Walt Whitman and the Problems of America,"of Stealing the Language, Alicia Ostriker says that the primary thing that she noticed about Whitman's poetry was that he "permitted love...The degree and quantity and variety of love in Whitman are simply astonishing"(222). Ostriker touches upon the very subject that helps break Whitman's poetry away from being labeled specifically as "hetero" or "homo" and reaches most adequately into the realm of simply Whitman as poet. He says in section 5 of Song of Myself, "And that I know the spirit of God is the brother of my own,/ And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women/ my sisters and lovers/ And that a kelson of the creation is love"(28). Many, many other various types of love are celebrated throughout Leaves of Grass and through the combination of all of these, Whitman creates as the ruling factor of his democracy the boundless beauty and oneness of the spirit in which, "every atom of his blood, formed from this soil"(25) is inextricable from those of others. So "the bride [who] unrumples ...
