Sex as a Language

As we wrapped up our discussion of Cisneros, we explored the use of sex as a poetic tool taking on several meanings. While he may be an old, white guy, Walt Whitman understood the power of sex as a language and tool for expression. Not only did he use sex a means of communicating liberation and pantheistic spirituality, but he also appreciated the erotic for what it is in the most literal and physical sense. In his most famous poem, "Song of Myself," Whitman explores this duality to sex. In the second section of the poem, Whitman writes:

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

In this section of the poem, he describes the unity between the speaker and nature through an erotic experience. However, his sensory imagery also speaks to his appreciation for sex (without specifically laying out specific acts) as a physical interaction. Cisneros does something very similar in many of her poems. She speaks to issues of race, gender, and sexuality, but we may lose sight of her acknowledgement of the beauty of the male and female body and sex itself.