How Did Walt Whitman Break The Taboos
Whitman broke the taboos about writing on sexuality. Although he was sexually frank in his poetry, he was strongly against whatever merely pornographical. He asserted, “No one would more rigidly keep in mind the difference between the simply erotic, the merely lascivious, and what is frank, free, modern, in sexual behavior, than I would: no one” (Reynolds, “Why I Write Cultural Biography: The Backgrounds of Walt Whitman’s America” 389). “Indeed, given the contemporary resistance to any published utterance that included sexual overtones, it is remarkable that Whitman was able to carry out his poetic project at all” (Mullins 164). He included a cluster of poems called “Enfans d’Adam” in 1860 edition of Leaves. It depicted sexual love between