Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me
Whitman’s deletion of this poem from subsequent editions of Leaves of Grass is one of his worst crimes against himself and his readers. While his bad poems often read like self-parodies, this is a rare example of Whitman intentionally parodying himself, creating a funny, beautiful love poem that also provides an indispensable self-critique.
This is the second poem in Calamus in which Whitman addresses the States directly. In “States!” he had stayed in prophetic mode, assuring the States that he would be their redeemer, linking the men of Massachusetts, Missouri, Maine, Vermont, Carolina, Oregon, Michigan, Manhattan, Kansas, and even Canada, Cuba and Mexico (soon to be new states, apparently). Now, he addresses himself directly to the land of the prairies, southern savannas, Ohio, Lake Huron, Niagara Falls, the Californian mountains, and Canadian woods, but only to tell them to get lost; he is resigning his post as bard.
This is the first poem in which there is no plurality of friends and lovers; there is only one lover. He and Whitman make their own cosmos; it is enough for them to be together. Whitman’s renunciation is silly (i.e., “you Kanuck woods”) and yet deeply moving. He recites everything he ever cared about – knowledge, patriotism, heroism, and poetry – and how they fused perfectly in his role as American bard – only to lay them all at his lover’s feet; they are empty and tasteless compared to love.
In “States!” and many other works, Whitman presents adhesiveness as inclusive, patriotic glue, but here it is just the opposite; it is the exclusive force that severs. The poem is like judo: it takes the grandiose force of Whitman’s bardic poetry and subverts it into a love poem; the more powerful we find his other poems, the more powerful this poem becomes by contradicting them.
In “Of the terrible question of appearances” love recharges the poet’s erotic connection to the world, making it seem real, meaningful, and worthy of song; and yet it also leaves him silent and “indifferent.” Similarly, in “Long I thought,” love renders everything but itself “empty” and “tasteless” and again leaves Whitman “indifferent” – in this case, to his own songs. Quite brutally, love “severs.” Whitman, outside of Calamus, tends to find the whole world erotically charged: even the air has genitals. But perhaps it is easier to be omni-erotic and pantheistic when you are solitary and looking for love wherever you can find it. When you are in love with one person, this poem suggests, the world’s erotic energy flows into that person, into his difference, leaving everything else undifferentiated or indifferent. Lovers, in a state of ecstatic union, secede.