How Walt Whitman Became A Gay Icon

May 31 is the 200th birthday of the poet Walt Whitman. His works revere the common people, celebrate the sensual and revel in the sensation of being alive. No publisher of his time would touch his masterwork, Leaves of Grass, which spoke with a bold and unfamiliar voice about subjects that vocal critics considered obscene, especially in its homoerotic passages. Whitman worked with a printer in Brooklyn Heights to bring out the volume himself.

But now, New York City has embraced Walt Whitman as its very own homegrown bard. That explains why he is everywhere in the city right now: exhibitions at the New York Library Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library — how respectable! — as well as the Grolier Club, and The Morgan Library.

By fruitful coincidence, June 1 kicks off Pride Month. Scholars and poetry lovers have debated for years about the nature of what we would now describe as Whitman's sexual orientation. Click the player to hear WNYC's Jim O'Grady and Jami Floyd discuss the implicit connections between the rise of gay consciousness and Whitman's bicentennial birthday.