The narrator imagines “moans of movement, voices, hands in air” and “nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence” in a “Love Poem on a Theme by” this author. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this poet, described as a “childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator” in a poem whose narrator also asks Federico Garcia Lorca, “what were you doing down by the watermelons?”
ANSWER: Walt Whitman (The other poem is “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg.)
[10e] Allen Ginsberg’s “Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman” describes these things “fallen from heaven” and “locked shuddering naked,” drawing from a Whitman poem that begins, “I sing [this sort of thing] electric.”
ANSWER: bodies [accept “I Sing The Body Electric”]
[10h] In the essay “Taking a Walk Through Leaves of Grass,” Ginsberg highlights the eroticism of a Whitman poem titled for this figure. In the last poem preceding the Calamus poems, this figure is told “be not afraid of my body.”
ANSWER: Adam [accept “As Adam Early in the Morning”]
<HG, American Literature>