"A Woman Waits for Me" - Walt Whitman

"A Woman Waits for Me" is a very descriptive poem of what a man does to a woman to create children. There are many metaphors in it, so younger children may not understand it to be what it really is, but most people understand the poem. It is complicated to explain and define, but it has some of the same characteristics as the rest of Whitman's poems, so comparisons to the rest of his poems and showing how they are all related is mildly easy. In this poem, Whitman talks about women that can do everything that men can do, which at the time was insane. He talks about women that can swim or row boats or wrestle or shoot guns, which was all completely unheard of at the time. At that time, women were just beginning to get rights, so to think that they would be not only equivalent of men with their rights but also man's equal in what they can do was a completely new idea. This brought about a lot of controversy at the time, and since Whitman was already involved in a lot of controversy, this did not help his cause. His critics loved this, because they could call him crazy and rage about him and his works by pointing to this. They could explain that he was out of his mind because he thought that women could be the same as men. They could show that women did not even have the rights to vote, so if they could not vote, why would they even want to be like men? They could claim that those women would not be a good or real part of society, so Whitman was insane for even trying to say that that kind of woman would exist. This poem also confused many of his friends, because he was a homosexual, so for him to be talking about women in such a sensual way. His friends may have wondered if he had become heterosexual or bisexual, and since he did not, this poem was guaranteed to have confused all of his friends that did not know his inspiration for the poem. People do not know the inspiration of his poem now, and that is why we all marvel about what he was thinking and how he could talk about women in such a sensual way if he was a homosexual male. Even some of the critics that loved his works and thought he was amazing did not know what to think about this poem. They may have thought that he was going crazy. They may have thought that in his quest for "Self" he had lost his mind. He could have been trying to get in a woman's mind, but they probably did not agree with what he said, because he said women would be able to do the same things as men could do, which was also a big controversy at the time. This poem is extremely controversial, and peope today still do not know what to think of it.

Whitman, Walt. "Leaves of Grass (1891-92)." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 07 Mar. 2011. .

Whitman, Walt, and M. J. Killingsworth. "1856:Poems of Sexuality and the Body." The Cambridge Introduction to Walt Whitman. 45. Print.