Not heat flames up and consumes
In the spring of 1859, Whitman gathered twelve draft Calamus poems into a small notebook that he titled “Live Oak, with Moss” and later “Calamus-Leaves.” “Not heat flames up” is the first poem in the notebook, and the draft is quite similar to the final version in the 1860 edition. Had he used it as the first poem in Calamus, it would have lent the cluster a more urgent and erotic tone. It is one of the most passionate and physical of the poems, and it is the first one in which he seems to address an actual, individual lover to speak about their love.
The images of the consuming fire, the waves going in and out, and the seeds wafted through the ripe summer air suggest a love that is requited and consummated – at least in the poet’s imagination. The air is delicious and fertile; it “bears” the seeds – suggesting that it carries them in the breeze and carries them to birth. Nature and poetry unite: the “air” means both the atmosphere and the poet’s aria, the poem itself.
Interestingly, though, the poem is elemental but not earthy. Whitman invokes three of the four elements – air, water, and fire – but not earth. He places the seeds in the air, rather than the soil – in contrast to “Calamus taste.” This aerial imagery seems to reflect the distinction he draws in a later Calamus poem between his “primeval” love for women and his “disembodied,” “ethereal,” “floating” love for men. It contrasts with “Earth! my likeness!” in which he dares (even while telling us he dares not) to associate a fierce, bursting earthiness with “athletic” homoerotic love.
Sometimes in Leaves of Grass Whitman associates the word “perfume” with overly-civilized conventions and contrasts it with the odorless air, the manly smell of a working man’s sweat, or the non-flowery scent of fresh grass. Perfumes are temptations he must reject. But in the Calamus poems, where Whitman is “tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,” he is more comfortable with flowers, floral scents, and perfumes. The “frailest leaves” of Calamus are less aggressively manly than spears of grass; there is more room for “breast-sorrels” and “pinks.” Even in Calamus, however, he does not find the perfumes he likes inside houses; rather, they are wafted through the air or concentrated in the bouquets he gathers as he walks through the woods.