Whitman in Grub Street

In the years leading up to the war, Whitman, that old "Bowery B'hoy," was a Grub Street journo and frequenter of Pfaff's saloon, headquarters of New York's free-loving bohemian set. He was known as a "rough," a "rowdy" who fraternized with cabdrivers and longshoremen. The erotically tinged "Calamus" poems, written about 1860, suggest Whitman as something of a cruiser. In modern parlance, this street-level versifier was akin to a gay, hirsute Eminem.

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